


Through The Looking Glass

by iCarly1969



Series: Echoes From A Parallel World [1]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe, Bullying, Cheating, Dreams, F/M, M/M, Mirror Universe, Past Jason Grace/Piper McLean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-03-01 11:12:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 61,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2770904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iCarly1969/pseuds/iCarly1969
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was only supposed to be just one day in someone else's life, to see what the world could have been like if things had only been the slightest bit different.<br/>When the time was 3:59 and he couldn't get back, though, Nico started to realise just how much can go wrong when you climb through the looking glass without looking to make sure that this was a two-way passageway first.</p><p>(NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner)<br/>[Formerly titled: Echoes From A Parallel World]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Just A Dream

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimers: I am not Rick Riordan. I do not own anything you might recognize. This story is a work of fiction, using the characters from Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus, with a plot that is a mash-up of plots from a few books and movies. As such, it's not marked as a crossover.
> 
> Warnings: Guy x guy pairing. The romance is not the main plot, but it is an important subplot, so if you do not like this, click the back button. Rated for mild cussing that might occur somewhere in the near future. The characters are slightly out of character, too.
> 
> [Edit: I'm stealing the original title for one of my other stories because truthfully? It doesn't suit this story. Changed the summary, too, because this summary works better for the story than the previous one.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I believe it may appear that I have abandoned my previous stories. Sorry about that, it's just, it's been November. Guess what I have been doing? Since this story is already finished, I'll be posting one chapter every week, after I finished editing it. The portrayal of OCD may not be realistic, and if any of you readers see the flaws, please point them out, I'll correct them.
> 
> This chapter is mostly thoughts, it's to set up the story. It could be considered a prologue, the real story starts in the next chapter.
> 
> One more thing, this whole story was prompted by the song, Just A Dream. Of course, I listened to the cover version by Sam Tsui, but go and listen to that song, it's amazing.

'Thoughts'  
"Speech"  
 _Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories_

* * *

**Just A Dream**

_"_ _Nico!"_

_Bianca waved him over, ignoring Travis, who protested briefly through the mouthful of food at the idea of the 'kid' joining the table. Nico grinned as he walked over to join her, Percy trailing after him._

_Setting his tray down, he leant over and pecked Nico on the cheek. "Hey, kitten," he greeted, affection clear in his voice._

_Nico scowled at him, feeling the flush work its way onto his cheeks._

_"_ _I told you to stop calling me that!"_

_"_ _Yes, angel," Percy muttered as he stole a few cookies out of Nico's lunchbox. It revealed the neatly inked tattoo of a series of 0's, nicely done, a perfect line down his arm._

_Nico huffed, looking away from Percy. "That's not so much better, you know," he muttered, trying to sound a little more mature to salvage some of his pride. He knew, of course, that he failed. It did not quite matter when Percy leant over and kissed him again, properly this time, right on the lips._

_He tasted like chocolate chip cookies. That, and the strawberry-flavoured toothpaste he always uses –_

Nico bolted upright in his bed. Of course, he rammed his head into the bunk above him. He stilled, waiting to see if the occupant above had woken up, and almost sighed in relief as the snoring continued. Wincing a little as he rubbed at the sore spot, he glanced at the clock hanging on the wall beside the door. At this point of time, it was more of a habit than an actual concern about the current time.

4:00AM

He flopped back down onto his bed and glared at the glow-in-the-dark stars barely visible now. Rationally, he knew that they had done nothing to offend him – he was the one who moved, after all, they can only hang there, immobile, but he was so sick of waking up at this frankly inhumane time in the morning. It's already been six months and twenty-one days, not that he was counting.

Never mind that it was always directly preceded by dreams of a life in which everything was, well, not perfect, but as good as it could get.

That was the strangest thing.

He was fairly certain that people were not supposed to be able to remember their dreams, especially not those peaceful ones. He himself certainly could not recall any of the dreams that were not a particularly vivid nightmare.

Perhaps the ability to retain the memories was the trade-off for being woken up directly when the dream was about to end?

Whatever the reason was, he had been consistently woken up every night at 4:00AM after a glimpse of a life that was better than he could ever hope for, and, truth to be told? It was pissing him off a little.

He shut his eyes bitterly, trying to forget how it felt, to be part of that world.

Whoever said that a taste was better than nothing clearly did not know just how much it sucks, to be offered a quick preview of what could have been yours, directly before it was taken away and you were left wishing you could have more all while knowing, logically, that it was not possible. If he concentrated hard enough, he could still faintly taste Percy's lips on his, from when they had kissed, in this weird dream-world-universe thing that his subconscious appeared to have built for him.

He forced his eyes open. It was far too easy to soak in the world his mind had created. Easy, to the point that it was hard to remember that it was not real, to forget the fact that this was reality, and that was just a dream.

He needed something to do.

Something to distract him from where he just knew his train of thoughts was leading to.

He did not want to move, however. Besides, was it truly that hard to admit to himself that Percy was Annabeth's has been and always would be, in reality?

To believe, even for a single second, that Percy could have felt something for him when he asked Nico out, was what made him the fool in this play. This story. Of course, he had known that there was something off about this whole charade, but he had brushed it off.

A bloody idiot, that's what he was, for thinking that Percy could ever return his feelings.

He had never learnt how to swim, but when Percy had offered to take him somewhere, anywhere, for a date, he had agreed without thinking twice and allowed himself to be caught by the riptide of emotions.

To be swept away into the ocean, where Percy's affections and reassurances were really the only things keeping him afloat.

For a while, everything was perfect. Even though their relationship was kept in the shadows, away from everyone else. Even though he was still invisible at home and non-existent in school.

He managed to bury the little voice telling him that this was a joke, a dare - it was not real, cannot be real. He ignored the rational and sane part of him telling him to rebuild the wall and keep Percy out, to leave now and protect himself. To save himself by not setting his feelings up for the time when he would eventually hit the ground after falling too fast, too hard.

He just had to accept Leo's dare to go to the classroom behind the auditorium, the one that was always locked, the one that was too dusty and unused for him to want to go close to. The door being unlatched was the first indication, but he pushed it open, regardless. What he saw behind the doors crushed him.

Percy was flushed, breathing hard and fast and locked in passion with her, hands travelling close to dangerous territory –

Nico had fled.

He was not too proud to admit that.

'Dangerous territory,' he thought. His lips twitched slightly at the wording. He looked at the clock again.

4:11AM.

Huh.

It appears that introspection was quite time-consuming.

'I should wash up a little. Might as well work on staying awake properly, since I'm not going back to sleep anytime soon.'

He clambered out of bed a little unsteadily, careful not to make too much noise, too aware of Hazel snoring lightly in the bunk above.

The bunk that Bianca once slept in.

Nico winced a little at that. He had promised himself that he would never blame Hazel for everything that had happened. She was an excellent sister and Nico could accept that while she would never replace Bianca or the position she held in his heart, he had the space to accept another sister, one who was just as lost as him when it came to navigating the murky waters that was their lives with father, if not more so.

After all, it was not Hazel's fault that she turned up on the one month anniversary of Bianca's death, just as it was not her fault mother walked out when she found out that father was unfaithful. Hazel was slightly older than Nico and younger than Bianca, implying that father had bedded Hazel's mother only a few months before Nico had been conceived.

He sat back down, rather abruptly, feeling a little out of it. He did not want to think about this now. Then, he realised that there was a dust bunny on the floor, near the foot of his bed. His skin crawled a little as he wondered if he should clean up a little. Who knows how much dust could have gathered under the bed or settled on the floor while he was asleep?

Suddenly, he was extra aware of all the dirt that had probably accumulated since the last time he cleaned up. He was itching to get started to clean up now, but he refrained from doing so. _Breathe in, breathe out and focus on breathing._  It took a while for it to work, but he calmed, eventually. The urge to rearrange everything precisely and neatly faded to an annoyance worrying in the corner of his mind. Then, he sighed, shoulders sinking a little. No wonder Percy went back to his ex, even after swearing that he never wanted to do anything with her again.

Anyone was better than a 5'6" clean freak who flipped over bread crumbs in the carpet on better days and got obsessive with tiny details like the placement of stationary and cutlery on the worst.

Sure, he had come a long way from that, but it still creeps up every now and then, especially when he got a little more stressed.

He was forever grateful to Hazel, though, for putting up with him during the period in which he attacked everything with cleaning supplies and start rearranging everything whenever he thought it was dirty or messy, even if it was in the middle of the night and she was trying to sleep. She was more understanding than his father ever was.

Nico had no idea what had changed.

After Bianca had died, Hades was the one who had helped Nico through the compulsiveness. Even after Maria had walked out, they were close. Even if he treated Hazel better than he did with Nico, they had the understanding, the bond.

Then, Hades started spending less time with them – locking himself up in his room, spending extra hours in the lab after work hours to work on his pet project, forgetting that Hazel was around sometimes. It started around the time Nico started having the dreams, and even if Nico did not believe in coincidences, it felt a little far-fetched to say that his father's behaviour was linked to his dreams.

It hurts, though, that instead of offering help, his father just sent him directly to the psychologist and let the doctor deal with him, without giving him a chance to try, to recover on his own first.

Reading, he decided. Reading would take his mind off these thoughts.

He could not focus on the words, though. Instead, he found himself wondering. Even he indulges in the occasional what-ifs, after all. What if Hazel had never arrived with the letter, the photograph and the clothes on her back her only belongings? Perhaps mother would never have left if Hazel had never entered their lives.

Ha.

Who was he kidding?

He knew that mother had never liked the States. He knew that she had always wanted to go back to Italy, preferably with her children.

More specifically, Bianca.

He looked at the silver of a reflection he could see, on the metal stand of the lamp.

Pale skin, high cheekbones, messy untameable hair and brown-almost-black eyes. Enough for people who notices him to call him pretty. Not visible enough though, apparently.

His parents had not acknowledged Nico's existence since Bianca had died. The only real sign that they remembered he existed was the pocket money left in an envelope on the fridge every Saturday morning.

He could understand, even if he could not sympathize or empathize, as they were a bit caught up in their fight against each other. For months, their relationship simply worsened steadily, eventually becoming a tense silence whenever they were in the same room together, whether or not Nico was present.

Hazel was simply a catalyst, a simple, convenient excuse for mom to justify leaving. Deep down, he knew that if Hazel had never arrived, she would simply have found another reason to walk away.

If he were to be honest with himself, he was truly surprised that she had held on to the marriage and the family for this long.

He was an expert at lying, though.

Especially when it came to lying to himself.

It had been way too easy to pretend that he had never saw this coming, that he had actually expected her to stay for him, if not for anything else.

There was a reason he joined the drama club and excelled in the theatre electives he took up.

It was not much, just little things. Things like the fact that he was more visible on stage than he was anywhere else, even if nobody ever remembers him, even if he was only ever the character he was playing at the moment to them. He always took the mute and insignificant roles no one else wanted, only standing in for the main characters when the actual actors were absent, just to keep things going. The teacher, at least, acknowledged that he was good at this.

Acting was really one of the only talents he had and was proud of.

Doesn't that just say so much about his life?

He loved being someone else, though. As that person, he had the reassurance that even though he was less than perfect and was not particularly important, he would still do something right eventually.

Unlike in real life, where he just made mistakes after mistakes, since everything he did was always wrong, no matter how hard he tried.

In a way, he was addicted to the person he was and could be when he was not the failure of a son and a brother that he was in reality, after he left the stage and went back home.

The clock told him that it was now 4:23 AM.

He gave up on reading the book. Leaning back, he stared at the ceiling. There were no tiles there for him to count, he noted absently. Inevitably, his mind strayed off once more. Obviously, it went down the forbidden path of thoughts.

Percy Jackson.

An affair. With Percy Jackson.

It sounded sordid, even in his head.

That's really what it was, though. Since, when he confronted Percy about his not-really-ex-girlfriend, Percy revealed that it had never meant anything, that he had just wanted to explore and try something new after Annabeth was no longer a part of his life.

Percy had simply been curious, and Nico had stood out in the sea of students in the school.

He supposed that he should be flattered. Out of so many boys in this school, he was the one Percy had chosen. It hurts, though, and he was too heartbroken and strung out and emotionally wrung out to be optimistic about this.

In a way, it was similar to the state he had been in when Bianca ended up in the car accident after leaving the house in a fit because of a silly argument they had.

Only difference was, the first time, no one even noticed, and he eventually managed to pick himself up again to press on in life. This time, though…

He had made sure to keep everything quiet, since Percy had never wanted anyone to know and he was okay with being silent. Somehow, it had leaked, though. And, like all rumours, it spread like wildfire the moment the wind caught hold of it.

People started giving him sideways looks, and some, in particular, took to sneering at him and giving him a wide berth. Percy remained unaffected, whether due to his status or the fact that no one had known he was the one with Nico.

Nico took the fall for them.

He caught the eye of those who sought out weaker members of their community. He was not weak, not really, but he had been defenceless and was caught off guard.

Truthfully, he was able to fight back and more than capable of defending himself. After the first time he was cornered, he had swallowed his pride and asked his study partner to teach him how to fight. Reyna had agreed, and she had never asked him why, for which he was thankful.

Fighting was against the rules, though, and every single time he fought back, he was punished alongside them, more often than not. They almost suspended him for it, bringing it to his father's and Hazel's attention. She had begged him to stop fighting, tears shining but not falling. His father had simply gave him a cold look and told him to stop being so childish.

Detention after detention, until he learnt to just take it and keep quiet, then nurse his wounds silently later when he was alone, when there was no one around to see.

At least they never left visible bruises.

Nico rubbed his side absently, even though that bruise was already mostly healed. It has almost been two weeks. He should watch out, the next 'fight' would not be that far away.

After Percy, he had started dreaming. By the time the rumours started flying and he began to despise going to school, the other realm was ingrained into his life. For a while, he had lived solely for the little glimpses of the life he could have had.

Hazel broke him out of it the one time he had told her, telling her that this was the reality, and he should focus on his life. She brought him back on track.

It helps that at the start, in his dreams, he was pining for Percy too. He knew that he was a selfish brat for revelling in that fact. At that time, though, he was simply glad that he was not alone in practically suffocating. That, together with the fact that the only time he could still meet Bianca again was in that dream world he visits every night, helped to cement his belief in it. Even though, logically, he knew that the place in his mind simply does not exist, that it was a fraction of his imagination, he liked to think that it, and all its inhabitants, was just as real as he was.

Even though he knew that Bianca was dead and gone and would never come back, and that his mother never cared much for him.

Then, Percy went and asked him out.

The next time he fell asleep, they were dating. Ever since then, he had been waking up to the end of their interactions more often than not.

He had tried to be jealous, but he just ended up feeling heartsick.

He was tired of forever being second to someone else. He would never admit it, but he wanted someone who would love him unconditionally. Someone who would care enough to care about how he felt. In a way, he was glad for his dream self.

At least, he knew that Percy would never do the same thing Percy from reality did. Dream-Percy was always caring and loving, doting on him, and, mostly, proud of him. He was alright with holding hands in public, willing to let his friends see that he was with Nico and he never failed to praise Nico when he thought that Nico had done well. Even if he always ended up blushing, he knew that Percy had never been ashamed of him.

Unlike in reality.

It was not fair, really, to assume that Percy had been ashamed of their…affair, but in the times when he was feeling particularly vulnerable, he wished that he had had the courage to have asked Percy if they could have gone public.

At least then, he would have found out earlier that Percy had never felt anything for him and saved himself from the hardest part of the heartbreak.

Gosh, he sounded delusional, Nico thought as he slid down the chair a little. Wishing that he would be better off in a dream than in real life.

It was, after all, just a dream.

Wasn't it?


	2. The Invisible Killer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was only supposed to be just one day in someone else's life, to see what the world could have been like if things had only been the slightest bit different.  
> When the time was 3:59 and he couldn't get back, though, Nico started to realise just how much can go wrong when you climb through the looking glass without looking to make sure that this was a two-way passageway first.
> 
> (NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a lot of plot bunnies currently bouncing around in my head, and that's making it hard to concentrate and focus and finish up some of my stories. It's the start of more, though... and new chapter! This is the introduction of the actual story, and the story's picking up. Drop a review when you're done, let me know what you thought about this chapter, please?

'Thoughts'  
"Speech"  
_Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories_

* * *

**The Invisible Killer**

The thing was, he did not have many friends. He could admit that. The problem now, though, was that when he was actually seeking their company, he found that they were not around. Jason and Rachel were on vacation with their respective parents, Leo was visiting his father's family and Reyna was visiting her sister, a researcher currently doing a project in the Amazon forests.

He ended up drifting around a little aimlessly in the library. The silence was blissful, the only noise being the occasional rustle of the pages being turned and the hum of the air conditioner doing its best in summer. There was almost no one here except for the librarian and a few of the most faithful patrons.

It was mostly due to the fact that the library was located on the far side of the forest off the side of the town, with only a small, cobble-stoned path leading to it from the small road splicing off the main one.

Nico never minded, though. The walk was peaceful, and the library itself was clean. He could imagine how this place would look, however, without the care taken to maintain it. Left on its own, it would likely deteriorate to become that abandoned shack where monsters live in, the one seen in horribly done horror movies.

As he wandered down the aisles, he breathed in the smell of paper, and ink. That never failed to cheer him up. Most of the books here were old, clearly showing their age, yet they were all so obviously well cared for. Especially the ones in the classic collections and the historical ones. His favourite was the manga section, though – despite being the smallest library, it has the most extensive collection and every book there was an original copy. Even if that meant that every single book in those collections were in Japanese, or, occasionally, Chinese.

He took Japanese as a third language for a reason, after all. Of course, he was not fluent, and progress was slow whenever he tried to read, but he was willing to try. He was getting better at it. Picking out the next instalment in the series he had been following, he settled down in his corner. It was slightly dusty, but it was tolerable. It helps that there was a cushy beanbag and no one to bother him there.

Letting himself get absorbed into the world crafted out by the words and the drawings, he detached himself from reality. Time did not mean much when he was reading, and he was never one to put down a book once he got started.

"Hey," someone greeted. He looked up, annoyed. He did not like being yanked out of the comfortable little world he was in so rudely, especially if it came with the added bonus of human interactions. He limits his circle of living things to his pet dog, Cerberus, his half-sister and his friends.

Then, he registered who it was.

"Leo? What are you doing back here?"

Leo motioned for him to scoot over, before proceeding to throw himself onto the beanbag next to Nico. Never mind that there was barely enough space for a grown adult, and that they could both fit there only because they were both too skinny.

He grinned at Nico. "I missed my favourite grouchy, grumpy, little kitten, of course! I just had to get back here sooner."

The annoyance came back in full throttle. There was an edge of fondness, however, that Nico was not quite willing to look into. He settled for letting the irritation take over instead.

"That's not an actual answer, you know."

The grin simply slid off his features. Nico remained silent as Leo stared blankly at the bookshelf in front of the two of them.

"You could unload your baggage here, I'll listen."

Leo's lips twitched a little. "That's not the main problem, actually."

"What is, then?" Nico prompted.

"There's a serial killer running rampant."

Nico tried to think of something to say other than "Oh". Considering his rather extensive vocabulary, it was rare for him to find himself speechless.

Leo cracked a half-hearted smile, as if he could read Nico's thoughts. "Yeah, oh."

For a while, it appears that Nico would have to prod Leo for more details.

"They told me to leave, because the victims were picked completely randomly. There's nothing consistent, it's like the killer decided that he wanted to kill this person and just did it."

Nico considered the new information. He reclined against the wall a little. "That would make the person a psychopath, wouldn't it? It's actually not entirely impossible."

Silence settled like a blanket. They stayed there, in the corner of an antique library.

Nico broke it.

"Why did you come to look for me, then?"

Leo startled. "What made you think I looked for you?"

"You wouldn't normally come to the library," Nico pointed out. Leo looked a little sheepish when he realised that he was truly caught out.

"True."

After a considerable pause, he revealed his true intentions.

"I need your help."

Nico's eyes flicked to his face. He looked unusually serious. "With what?"

"Research."

"Research."

"Yeah," Leo confirmed. "I need help with that."

Nico sighed theatrically. "It's always research. What're you going to do when I'm no longer around?"

Leo grinned at him. "Go to Reyna, of course." Nico stared at him. Of course that was his response. What had he been expecting when he was asking? He brought the topic back on track.

"So, what's this research about?"

Leo seemed to be thinking about it. Nico straightened up, stretching a little. Leo copied his movements, before walking off, expecting Nico to follow. "Aliens, possibly. Inter-dimensional Travel and the Multiverse theories, too."

Nico stared after him. He turned back when he realised that Nico was not following. He blinked a little.

"And portals and wormholes," he added.

* * *

The pile of books could be used to build a fortress around them, if they had been inclined to do so.

There were enough, after all. They had borrowed every book that possibly linked to the topics in question. The librarian checked everything out for them without asking questions, since she knew Nico quite well. Carting everything home was a nightmare, though. Nico's bed became the base.

"Why the sudden interest?"

Leo paused in his reading, thinking about the question. "I overheard some of them arguing over the possibility of this killer being something non-human, as in, something from another world." He motioned at Nico when he opened his mouth to give Leo his opinion. "I know. I know, it's not entirely possible, and I thought that aliens probably sound more plausible, but I wanted to be sure. Be prepared, you know, just in case it is not just a theory, that it is real that the universe had played a giant cosmic joke on us and made us the last world to find out that multidimensional travel is actually possible, although it could –"

"I wasn't going to say that. I was going to ask why they assume that this killer is not from our world," Nico protested, a little indignant.

Leo stopped talking at that, before backtracking. "I, well, sorry for assuming… But, well, they are thinking about this killer not being human because of the way the victims were killed, as well as the fact that no one can see the killer."

"The killer could just as easily kill these people when no one else is around. Then no one would have seen him," Nico pointed out.

"It's not that no one had seen him, it's that no one can see him. Some of the killings were done in public. Quite often, it was on a mostly desolated road, but there were people in the coffee shops or book shops who looked out and saw the pedestrian just being vaporized into ashes. And it's not just one or two people, every single witness found said the same thing." Seeing Nico's disbelief, he was quick to add, "And the security cameras recorded this too. So many that you can't say it didn't happen."

Nico processed the information dump.

"Can I see those videos?"

"Why do you assume I have it?"

Nico gave him a flat look.

"Okay, alright, I have it. Geez, can't you think of me as a good, law-abiding person for once, and not automatically assume that I have done something I wasn't supposed to have done?" Leo grumbled as he fished around in his pockets.

Nico smirked. "I know you better than that, Valdez. I keep quiet because I'm your friend, but you can't assume that I would think the best of you, since, even with Jason and Reyna around, I probably know you the best."

Leo paused in his search and looked up at Nico. "Did you just make a pun?" Nico flushed. "Did you? Oh my gods, you did! Nico Di Angelo finally lightened up and made a joke! Not a very funny joke, but it's still a pun, which is as good as a joke!" He cackled as Nico glared at him.

The effect was kind of ruined, though, thanks to the red colouring his cheeks.

Leo continued guffawing as Nico chucked a pillow at him.

* * *

It was six in the afternoon and they were only three-quarters done with the stack of books. Leo had to leave, though, due to some other appointment. After confirming that there was, indeed, an invisible killer terrorising the people, Leo left, leaving Nico with the big pile of papers and books and some leftover snacks Leo had not managed to polish off.

Of course, being the horrible cook that he was, Nico decided not to risk the kitchen's wrath, choosing instead to finish it up and deem it a proper dinner. After cleaning everything up, he stacked the research materials neatly on his table and waited for Hazel to come back from her date.

He had trouble falling asleep that night. The hands of the clock crawled slowly around the rim, circling the numbers. Tracking its movement, Nico contemplated his options. Continue trying to fall asleep, and eventually manage to sleep for a while after being bored to death, or wake up and do useful things, then regret the lack of sleep in the morning? He groaned, squeezing his eyes shut.

Then, he opened them again.

11:47PM.

He rolled over, facing the wall. Hazel's light snores filled the silence.

She had passed out on her bed moments after she fell into it, dreaming her night away peacefully. Nico wished that he could be like her. He wanted to shut down his brain and just stop thinking so much, but, apparently, that is way, way, too much to ask for, no matter how reasonable it was. Seven months with barely five hours of sleep every night caught up, though, and he finally fell asleep due to sheer exhaustion.

It was not that long before he jerked awake with a gasp, almost hitting his head on the bunk above.

Not wanting to wake Hazel in case a repeat of what happened the last time he woke up this way, he bolted for the bathroom. Taking a deep breath, he braced himself against the wash basin, heart still racing wildly. The nightmares doesn't happen often, thank gods, but when they do, they were brutal. And the emotional baggage they unearth left him reeling every single time, forcing him to keep up the mantra to remind himself that it wasn't real, that it was just that – a nightmare. Not reality.

Bianca had died long ago in reality, and Percy had not broken up with him that way. They had never even been an item to begin with.

He splashed some water on his face, hoping to clear his mind.

Glancing at the clock hanging on the wall beyond the door, he saw the time.

3:56AM

Nico couldn't help the semi-bitter smirk that formed.

'Seems like there's no point trying to fall asleep again,' he thought. He stared at the wash-basin, fascinated by the water swirling into the sinkhole.

'Wasn't there a story in which someone was on a boat in a whirlpool like that? Or vortex, whatever it was called?' The question popped into his mind randomly, and he thought about it for a while. Eventually, he decided that he should call it quits, as there was no way he could force himself to remember the name.

He straightened up with the intention of picking up where Leo and he left off and burying himself in the research. Before he was out of the toilet door, however, a movement in the corner of his peripheral vision caught his attention. He whipped around, a little tense and stared at the mirror.

His reflection was not staring back at him. In fact, he had just walked out of the shower, dripping wet and wrapped in a towel, apparently talking to someone outside the  _closed_  door. The one that was very much open in front of him.

He should have flipped. He should have lost his composure and possibly thrown something at the mirror, screaming that it was possessed, that someone should look into either replacing it, or exorcising it.

He did not.

He did, however, spare a moment to wonder if he had finally lost it, due to sleep deprivation and the ton of emotional baggage Hazel had always told him was unhealthy, and had gone out of his mind. Maybe he should have looked into the therapy sessions that even Rachel had suggested he attend.

His reflection turned around and spotted him. Completely unaware of how Nico was feeling, he greeted, "Hello, I've been waiting for quite a long while to meet you in person, Nico of Earth 197."

Suffice to say, Nico would never admit to having fainted.

He only suffered an overload and found it hard to maintain a conscious awareness of what was going on around him. Yes. That was exactly what it was.

There was someone saying something to him as he came back to the land of the living, breathing and sane. Opening his eyes, he registered that he was still in the bathroom. More importantly, he was lying in the bathroom floor, indicating that he likely had been there the remaining of the night.

Secondly, Hazel was looking down at him with concern, her hand on his forehead and sounding as if she was trying not to panic. She visibly relaxed when he blinked at her while she waved her other hand around more.

"Why are you here?"

"I…'m not sure…I think I fell…."

She looked a little alarmed, before proceeding on to gently chastise him for not being careful about watching where he stepped. As she helped him up, she went back to being concerned as he swayed on his feet for a while, dizzy after being in a horizontal position for that long. She asked if he was feeling alright. He could feel the migraine coming on.

Nico was still trying to orientate himself as she led him to their room. He nodded mutely in response to all her questions, adamantly refusing to acknowledge the part of his brain screaming at him that something had, indeed, happen the previous night, or, rather, earlier in the morning, that there was someone else in the mirror and that he had the right to have lost his composure and passed out on the spot in shock.

After she left to prepare breakfast, he went back and checked the mirror, just in case. There was absolutely no one hiding there, and nothing to indicate that anything could have happened the night before. It was just an absolutely normal and innocent mirror.

As he changed, Nico wondered if he should take up Jason's and Rachel's suggestion of taking pills to help him fall asleep. If he was already starting to hallucinate, this lack of sleep was more serious than he had thought it actually was.


	3. I'm Fine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was only supposed to be just one day in someone else's life, to see what the world could have been like if things had only been the slightest bit different.  
> When the time was 3:59 and he couldn't get back, though, Nico started to realise just how much can go wrong when you climb through the looking glass without looking to make sure that this was a two-way passageway first.
> 
> (NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one day late, but Merry Christmas anyway! Mostly a filler chapter, to keep things going on. Also, there's this song called Stand In The Rain by Superchick, it suits this chapter. Go and listen to it, it's worth listening to.

'Thoughts'  
"Speech"  
_Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories_

* * *

**I'm Fine**

As the teacher droned on and on about inane things such as the importance of arranging the equation into the right order, he allowed his mind to drift without direction.

As long as he did not think about the mirror, he was fine.

Which, of course, meant that he thought about a mirror. Mirrors and alternate worlds and wormholes and aliens. Leo was getting to him.

It made sense, though. If what he had seen had been real, then it had to be either an alternate universe, or magic. While theoretically, there was actually multiple loopholes in every single theory about multiverses, it made more sense than magic, but what if it was just –

"Nico?"

Startled, he jerked upright a little, before trying, unsuccessfully, to shrink back into his seat. Scanning the board quickly, he did some mental calculation.

"X is 17, Y is 19, and length of AB is 3 cm."

The teacher sighed. "Correct on all counts, but I asked you to open the window. It's getting stuffy in here."

Nico felt his face heat up as he complied. Sitting back down, he noticed that the boys behind the teachers were either snickering or sneering at him. He tried to sink into his seat and appear unobtrusive.

"Nerd," one of them mouthed, before sitting up straight and looking at the board when the teacher turned around.

A flash of anger surged through him at that. Being good at schoolwork was not a bad thing, they have no right to belittle him for that. Nerd was not even a proper insult.

He caught himself before he could glare at them, though, choosing to glare at his worksheets instead. After a while, though, he felt sorry for them. They never did anything to offend him, they should not be taking the heat for those jerks.

From the looks of it, though, he should probably expect another confrontation soon.

It's just a matter of after class, or after school.

'More reasons to drop by the pharmacy and finding ways to keep Hazel from finding out and worrying. Yay,' he thought sarcastically. He had not been in a good mood to begin with. Really, it's as if life was just out to get him today.

Every time he saw a mirror, he got a little more unsettled. It was making him unusually skittish, to the point that even Leo noticed that there was something off about his behaviour today. Thankfully, there were not many mirrors in the school. He actively avoided those he knew were around, too, but he realised that the people who took pleasure in hurting him noticed that today was a particularly bad day. They were definitely not above taking advantage of it.

It's like they wanted Nico to fight back.

The urge to start scrubbing down everything he might have to come in contact with started to gnaw at him. Keeping it under wraps was hard, with the additional stress of trying his best to not anticipate the upcoming 'fight'.

Nico was really just glad that Leo knew him well enough and respected his privacy by not pressing on after Nico had not given him a straight response initially.

For some reason, Rachel had come back earlier, too, and he ran into her in the corridor once, colliding into her with enough force to make her drop all her books. As he lay there, sprawled out on the floor on top of her with the papers and books scattered around them, the sense of déjà vu came back in full force. It was how they had first met, but that should not make him feel as…disjointed from reality as it does.

"I know it's comfortable here, Nico, but it would be a little more comfortable for me were you to get off. You're really light, but it's still a lot more weight than absolutely comfortable," she remarked after a while.

It shook Nico out of the daze he had fallen into and he hurriedly got up, apologizing and scrambling for the papers as he did so.

She sat up and looked at him. Nico could feel the weight of her stare. When he met her eyes, he could see that she was thinking about something. The concern in her eyes were a little too disconcerting, too knowing.

"Are you alright?" she asked, out of the blue.

A little caught off guard, Nico automatically replied that he was fine.

She narrowed her eyes. "Leo told me that there was something off about you all day today. You're usually a lot more careful than this."

Nico stared at the pile of books and papers haphazardly stacked together in front of him, contemplating how to arrange them properly.

"If there's something wrong, talk to us, alright?" she sighed, a little too used to this. As she stood up, she stared at Nico and the books. Stooping over, she picked them up with one arm before offering Nico a hand up.

Glancing up, Nico met her eyes briefly as he accepted her help.

They stood at the corridor slightly awkwardly, before Nico hesitantly suggested that they meet in the afternoon at his place, since there was something he was interested in sharing with her.

Rachel's eyes widened a little, and she looked ready to agree when a little flash of guilt popped up. "Father's taking me out for dinner tonight…" she trailed off, before adding hastily that she could cancel.

Nico cut her off, telling her that she should spend more time with her father, and that he wasn't free tomorrow because he needed to help out at the shelter he works at as a volunteer, but they could meet up on the day after tomorrow.

She looked slightly relieved as the bell rang.

They proceeded on to their next classes respectively, and Nico didn't see her for the rest of the day. For some reason, he didn't run into Leo again either.

His mind suggested that Leo could be avoiding him because he was unsure of Nico's reaction to him talking about Nico behind his back with Rachel and possibly Reyna and Jason, but Nico silenced it. It's not as if he never suspected that they talked about him more often than not when he was not around. It's nice to have the confirmation, in a way, and the fact that they were alright with letting him know.

He was on his way home as usual. Except, he was running late since one of the teachers had him stay back to discuss his extra credit projects.

As a result, he decided to take the shortcut in the alleyways, even though he just knew that it was a bad idea. He really wanted to get home early, though. It looked like it was going to rain soon, with the clouds gathering and all that. He cursed the fact that he had not thought to bring his umbrella as he hurried down the third alley.

They were waiting for him there.

He should have expected it, he had anticipated this, but sometime between Economics and the end of school, he had been too distracted by other things and had forgotten about it.

The first punch was thrown by the redhead this time, instead of the raven that was…absent today? Coming to think of it, Nico had not seen him around the past few days. Nico did not get much time to dwell on his thoughts, yanked back into piloting his body so he could react in time, trying to duck or roll with the punches, wishing desperately that he would be let off the hook this time if he fought back.

Except for the minor detail that even if he fought back, he would still lose. There were so many of them and only one of him, he would only get more injuries. He could not count on support from the adults, either – if he brought it up to the teachers, they would just all be given detention or something like that, and the retribution the next time would be worst. Or, even better, they would twist it around and make it sound like he was the one who had went insane and attacked them. No one would ask him after that, since he was not too important in the grand scheme of things.

Not that they would have listened to him, anyway, and it's not like many people care.

They packed up as the sky shed its first tears. Sneering at Nico, they called him a few names and left. After they disappeared from his line of vision, Nico gave in to the urge to curl up on himself. They were not around to see his weakness anyway. He tried to get his breath back and wrestle his pain back under control, so he could stand up by himself and get home. Then, he would deal with this like he always does.

The rain started beating down in earnest – a rare downpour that just had to happen today. The icing on a thoroughly crappy cake. Nico found himself thoroughly soaked as he finally found the willpower to force himself to stand up, ignoring the fact that it ached everywhere and that he probably had some bruised ribs, since he was finding it hard to breathe properly and painlessly. No dinner later either, he wasn't sure his stomach could take that.

It would take a long while to get home, though. It hurt too damned much to put too much pressure on his left foot, so he leant against the wall, temporarily relieving his weight. He was already soaked anyway. Spending more time here would not change the fact. A jagged shard of pain shot through his heart as he recalled how Bianca used to leave a cup of hot chocolate out for him if he were to come home when it was raining. Especially if it was pouring. She knew how much he hated being thoroughly wet.

Hazel does it too, but it never tasted the same and he had never wanted her to replace Bianca, she was too nice a person and he refused to be that selfish. Besides, she was with Frank on a date (again), and they were probably watching the newest movie, the one he had gotten the tickets for her for. Jason and Reyna were either on the other side of the country, or were not even in the country, and Rachel and Leo had better things to do, better places to be.

Nico touched his forehead to the wall then, trying to keep the rain out of his face. At least it would be easier to breathe then. As he tried to summon the willpower to actually start walking home, his mind flitted to the world in his dreams. To the fact that there, he would probably have remembered to bring the cursed umbrella for once in his life, or if he did not, someone would notice that he was not around and look for him. Because, obviously, he just absolutely loved torturing himself.

To the point that he was dredging up the reminders that he was such a failure in real life that even his subconscious acknowledges it, and created him a refuge to deal with that. Then, as if that was not enough, try to bring it into his real life.

The most insulting part? It had almost succeeded in making him believe that it was possible that in some universe somewhere in the omniverse, he was not such a screw-up with misfortune to match Hercules', dragging everyone he got close to into the inordinate, unfortunate mess that was his life.

But seriously? Turning the dream into a reality? Projecting some freaky science fiction magic thing here, in a world where science and logic dictates everything?

Nico was starting to question his sanity.


	4. Just One Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was only supposed to be just one day in someone else's life, to see what the world could have been like if things had only been the slightest bit different.  
> When the time was 3:59 and he couldn't get back, though, Nico started to realise just how much can go wrong when you climb through the looking glass without looking to make sure that this was a two-way passageway first.
> 
> (NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After some editing, two chapters became one! Drop a review when you're done, let me know what you thought about this chapter, please?  
> Also, Happy New Year!

'Thoughts'  
"Speech"  
Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories

* * *

**Just One Day**

Falling asleep was starting to feel more like a dream that was unattainable. Especially tonight.

It was debatable whether it was the pain or the mirror keeping him up, though. While the bruises made it impossible to find a comfortable position to settle and go to sleep in, the mirror kept his mind awake, eating up his sleepiness in giant bites. He was so sorely tempted to go and check the mirror in the bathroom and confirm that it was only a hallucination, but something held him back.

Maybe, just possibly, there was a little part of him that wanted the mirror to be actually a portal to another world. He read the Chronicles of Narnia when he was younger, and he would be lying if he said that he had not studiously and systematically checked every closet or wardrobe in every house he visited when he was ten. He grew out of it, but a part of him would always want to explore another world.

Turning over yet again, he sought out the cooler part of his bed.

It still hurts. Damn the redhead. The only reason Hazel had not seen right through him was the fact that she came back late again, and thus he could snuggle into his blankets and pretend to be asleep by the time she snuck into the room.

At least the raven… Jack? Mark? Jackie? Whatever his name was, he was never this brutal. He preferred to do the work himself, only setting the others on him if he fought back. That meant that as long as Nico did not retaliate, it would not get this bad, since the guy's stamina was not that great. Which… what happened to him? Now that he was thinking about it, Nico realised that he had not even seen the guy in the canteen for at least a week now. Maybe he had went overseas? That was not right either, he did not have much reason to do that, no family outside of this backwater town and no thirst for adventure, for roaming beyond.

Sometime while he was picking apart the possible theories behind the disappearance of the leader of the group of empty-headed idiots, he slipped into the realm of unconsciousness. He was jolted back into the land of the conscious suddenly and unceremoniously by the urgency, the need to use the toilet. He winced as he applied pressure on his foot, but he made it there as fast as he could and did his business.

He was washing his hands when he realized that there was no one in the mirror.

The tap continued running as he stared at the spot where he was supposed to be.

Everything in the mirror was exactly as it should be, except, with minor differences that stood out. For example, the curtains surrounding the shower stall was drawn, and there was a towel there that had not been put on the rack with the other towels since –

"Hey, Neeks, can I come in now?"

The voice hit him like a bullet, catching him completely off guard, knocking the wind out of him with the sheer familiarity of it. That was a voice he had never thought he would be able to hear again, something he had thought was completely gone, forever.

"A second!" someone called back.

That someone sounded so suspiciously like him.

That is, if he spoke with an Italian accent all the time.

The running water went forgotten as the shower curtains were drawn open. Nico was tempted to turn around and check that there was no one in the shower behind him.

Because, there was no way that was him. Him from an alternate universe or not.

Mirror-him was the right side of scrawny, not lean per se, but not too skinny either.

Unlike him. Leo had once approached him about the fact that he looked like he was starved at home, and he had not responded well. He had not too kindly told Leo that it was not his business, and that it was not within his control what his appearance was like. Suffice to say, they never broached the topic again.

Leo doesn't need to know that he had never quite gotten into the habit of eating regularly, as he had the tendency to forget that normal human beings needed three meals a day to function, so he would forget to eat if he did not keep track of when his last meal was.

Their eyes met in the mirror then, and his thoughts were derailed by his doppelganger speaking up.

"Nice to know that someone actually lives on that side of the mirror."

Nico startled a little when he realised that he was probably the guy in the mirror to the person in the mirror. Gods. That sounds… exactly like something out of a fairy-tale or science fiction or something?

The words came out of his mouth unchecked, though. "You're real?"

"I think that I should be asking that," the guy said.

The second on the clock reflected in the mirror on the other side ticked closer to 4:00. The single-worded question spilled out.

"How?"

His doppelganger stared back. He was apparently just as unsure.

He flickered off. The mirror showed Nico staring back at himself, heavy eye bags and half-stunned expression all there. Nico stumbled out of the bathroom.

4:00AM

He fell back into the bed in shock, wincing at the impact before his mind turned back to the meeting. Was it even a meeting? What was going on?

* * *

The idea took hold in his head sometime before lunch. It stayed, persistently.

It started as he wondered about the portal as the science teacher droned on about the laws of physics. Many of the theories proposed were never disproven, even if they were not proven. The one that stuck out was the one on mirrored universes. It had something to do with a black hole and the antimatter, but it spoke about how for everything that were around, there was a carbon copy in a mirrored universe, and there was a link between them.

It did not explain why the link would be in his bathroom, and neither did it explain just why… why Bianca was alive there where she should be dead, but it was an interesting theory, and it was one of those that mentioned portals, even if it was brief. It stated that for every parts of the worlds that touched, overlapped, a portal would be formed, establishing a connection that would allow things to pass through. Does that meant that Nico could get to that world?

When that question came up, Nico spaced out more. This time, he contemplated the possible scientific breakthroughs if he could find out how this worked. Then he could, perhaps, finally stop being such a disappointment. Maybe this was it? He could prove that it was possible to get to another world, another universe, and the whole realm of science would be redefined, wouldn't it?

Perhaps all the scientists would be left trying to reconcile this with everything they have right now. It's not that they'll mind, actually, if they really enjoyed experimenting and testing and exploring. This was just a whole new world of theories and possibilities that would likely be frustrating and almost impossible to manoeuvre, but it would not be completely impossible and it would be satisfying and fun.

Even better, what if the technology and scientific advances in that world was light years ahead of that in this world? They could make improvements in leaps and bounds, and the breakthrough would be extraordinary.

All this swirled around in his head as he wandered home that night. It was enough that he mostly did not notice the pain that laced through his systems whenever he applied too much pressure on his busted ankle. Hazel had walked home with him, but she had mostly given up on trying to get him to respond to her questions. She could recognise that when he was stuck in his head with theories or blueprints to be built, there was no point trying to ground him in reality.

This time, it was definitely anticipation keeping him up. After Hazel settled in for the night, he found himself unable to fall asleep. He had enough time to wrap his head around the fact that this was, possibly, a ground-breaking discovery that would change science as we know it, and now he was just bubbling with questions. Obviously, he would not be able to fit everything into the one or two minute session they had, but they could figure something out, right?

What had the boy tried to say, though? Was it important? The questions marched around in his head, demanding his full attention.

Eventually, Nico gave up on sleeping. There was other ways to pass time, after all.

Instead, he went and retrieved a book from the bookshelf and settled down in the living room, choosing to read just to give himself something to do other than lying there, staring at the stars as the glows faded, counting the seconds while his mind sped off at a million miles an hour wondering what could happen next.

He was not entirely sure of when, exactly had he fallen asleep, or what had woken him up when he re-entered the land of consciousness.

Glancing down, he noticed that the book was open on page 187.

Huh. He could barely recall having read to page 123. Or was it 23? He wasn't quite sure, he just knew that it was the part where the main character jumped onto a flag pole from a window in an office building after discovering that his uncle's car was riddled with bullet holes.

Closing it, he looked at the clock.

3:57AM.

He was a little surprised by the accuracy of his internal clock, although he supposes that he should have expected it. He had been waking up at the same time every night for seven months, after all, excluding the nights when he did not fall asleep at all, or woke up due to a nightmare.

Putting the book back, he walked towards the mirror in the bathroom. Pausing outside the bathroom door, he hovered a little, suddenly nervous. What if the previous two nights were not real? Or it was, indeed, 4:00 AM there, and his doppelganger was not awake? What if –

Shaking his head, he cleared the doubts. No point thinking about that now, it would just make him unnecessarily worried.

Steeling his nerves, he went in, and stared at the mirror.

Unlike before, this time, he was a little more prepared.

It was still slightly disorientating and disconcerting to watch as he suddenly warped a little, before being replaced by mirror-him. Apparently, he had been waiting for this too.

The words spilled out of his mouth unchecked once more. Somehow, he could not regret what he said this time, though. It felt like a brilliant idea now that he voiced it out.

"Want to switch?"

To his credit, the boy in the mirror only hesitated a little before he replied, "Are you the guy I keep thinking was me in my dreams? You've got an interesting life."

Which, of course, was totally not what he asked, but while it threw him off guard, it made him infinitely more curious.

"You dream too?"

"The only reason I was up the first time I noticed that there was no one on the other side of the mirror was because I woke up at 3:58 and tried to clear my head," mirror-him snorted.

Nico thought about it. "Yesterday and the day before?"

"Mom's not home. Someone has to drive Bianca back." He paused then. "So, are you?"

"If I am, than you probably was the guy I dreamt that I was for the past seven months, give or take." Nico scrambled for something to confirm that. "You date Percy, right?"

The reflection processed that before huffing out a laugh. "This whole conversation sounds so weird. Yes."

"So, you know what I'm mostly like, and, if you're fine with being me for one day, can we switch? Please?" Nico steered the conversation back to the original question.

"Why would you want to live my life?" He sounded puzzled.

"It's not really just your life, I want to see what the technology and the likes there are like, I mean, if we combined the theoretical and practical sciences we both have, we could –"

"Okay, fine, why not?"

Nico glanced up at the clock on the other side of the mirror. They had about 10 seconds left. "We should do this fast."

His reflection stared at him for about a second before clambering onto the counter. As he got closer to the mirror, and, indirectly, Nico, Nico found himself instinctively backing up a little. Goosebumps formed when the mirror rippled, the person who looked exactly like him  _just coming out if it like…like…_

"If you're not regretting asking me to switch with you, do it quick. Not much time left."

Nico glanced at him, blanking out for a moment in panic. Before giving himself a chance to rethink his words, though, he got onto the countertop and pressed forward.

The first contact with the mirror jolted him a little. It was still a hard surface, but the touch seemed to make the mirror meld itself onto him, sucking him in, as if it was trying to pull him into it. From his position there, though, he could see mirror-him studying him. Their eyes met briefly in the mirror, and there was challenge in his eyes.

Nico ignored the sensation as he pushed right in.

For the short moment before he hit the other end of the portal, he was suspended, the feeling of free-falling making him nauseous. In there, the in-between, there was absolutely nothing, not even anything he could feel. The whole place was colourless, without any identifiable colour even without being all black.

Being on the other side slammed into him like a truck. He tumbled out of it, spat out by the same mirror that had taken him in, only, not on the right side, not anymore. His heart had begun beating a little faster, and he turned around. Before either of them could get more than a glimpse of each other, the mirror warped.

His hand collided with a hard surface when he touched the mirror, leaving behind a handprint.

The clock showed that it was now 4:00 AM.

Turning towards the half-opened door, he tried to sort out his feelings.

On one hand, he was excited. For the first time in forever, he would be seeing Bianca, talking to her again. Percy actually remembers, and acknowledges his existence, and his mother was still home. That was, if the person he switched with was, indeed, the guy he thought he was in his dreams, as put by him. That aside, the possibilities in this alternate universe was endless, if he could find one, maybe he could find the next one? And if the person on this side somehow created that portal, then he would find that material and figure out how it actually works.

On the other hand, though, this wasn't his world, Hazel wasn't here. It only truly occurred to him when he noticed that there was only two towels here – one for him, one for Bianca.

Not once, he realized, had he ever seen Hazel in his dreams.

It suddenly hit him that this was the life he would have led if Bianca had never died. If Hazel had never came into his life, if mother had never walked out of it. Well, you're here to search for the knowledge that this place could offer, not the life that you could have had.

'You could enjoy this chance,' something residing in the back of his mind whispered. 'You have to be him for a day, anyway. Might as well enjoy it while you could.'

That gave Nico pause. He would not be here just trying to pick up the answers to the questions that he had. It was a weekday, meaning that he would have to go to school. That meant that he would have to interact with other people as his doppelganger.

What was he supposed to do?

'Act.' His subconscious provided helpfully. 'Acting's one of the only things you're good at, right?'

He needed the script, though, to be good on the stage, he had to know what he was supposed to do, but this was not scripted. I'll try not to screw this up, Nico told himself silently. It's just for one day. I'm going to be him for one day. Oh hell, how am I going to not screw this up?

His hand was frozen on the doorknob. Nico was suddenly unable to summon the strength to push open the door and face this life now. 'I can't have stage fright for this. Even if it's not actually on a stage.'

Why did he ask to switch?!

It was done, though, and he could not regret it. Besides, the longer he wait, the harder it would be to bring himself to go out there. Semi-composing himself, he pushed open the door.

He paused with one foot out as he took in the room.

It was like he had walked back into his own room, just, with that weird feeling that something was off about it. Like there was something different, but not something he could spot at first glance.

Everything was just so  _similar_. The same arrangement, the same furniture, the same wallpapers, the same bunks, even the same books on the bookshelf, at the first glance.

Then, he started picking up on the small differences, the little spot-the-differences that made him a little off-kilter as his brain tried to match this room to his. For instance, the pattern on the bed sheet on his bed was different, with cars on it instead of dinosaurs (don't ask), the glow-in-the dark dinosaurs that had replaced the stars that had hung there, the laptop on the table was open instead of close, with the colour being silver-grey with a red sticker on the top left hand corner of the screen instead of metallic-grey with a post-it note stuck onto the top right hand corner of the screen, the books on the shelf (which had been Hazel's) had either an entirely different syllabus, or the same syllabus for someone who was two grades higher, the missing box of hair products abandoned in the corner from the time when Hazel still hoped to be able to tame her hair, the pile of novels and magazines where Frank usually leaves his deck of Mythomagic cards from the times when he came over with the intentions of playing with Nico –

It was a slap in the face when he realized that he was so used to having Hazel around he had moved on from Bianca. Had stopped thinking about her in present tense, thinking more about Hazel instead. Stopped seeing her every time he came back to his room, expecting to see Hazel, or possibly Hazel and Frank, or even his friends, instead.

How could he have just forgotten her like that?

The soft rhythm of snores filled the still air in the room as Bianca slept on peacefully, completely and perfectly unaware of what had just happened.

Just one day, he told himself firmly as he walked over to the bed that looked so much like his own, yet so different and definitely not his. From here, standing beside the bed, he only needed to tilt his head up a little to see Bianca, sleeping there. Guilt washed over him as he found himself tracing the lines of her, trying to remember everything he could.

That was when he spotted the something lining her right arm. In the dim lighting, it was almost indistinguishable, but that tattoo like thing definitely was not supposed to be there. Was it?

Gods, if everything was going to be this… _off_ , this different, all the time, then it was going to be really hard for him to predict his moves and what he should say, but he was always good at improvising. Now that he was actually here, he could appreciate just how little he knew about the life of the person he lived at in his dreams. Sure, he got glimpses all the time, but they were just that – a glimpse that offered no real insight.

Exhaling, he looked at the bed once more. Suddenly, he felt exhausted. Without much complaint, he got into the bed and tried to get comfortable. It did not really matter, since he ended up falling asleep almost as soon as he laid down.

* * *

He woke to the semi-familiar voice telling him that he was going to be late if he did not get up instantly. He groaned, turning over and burying his head under the pillow as he mumbled for H-

The unfamiliar fragrance of another sort of detergent cut sharply through the haze of sleepy disorientation, making him alert, cutting him off before he could say Hazel's name as he registered and tried to place the scent.

Suddenly, he was wide awake and fully aware of what was going on.

He forced himself to finish up the sentence, though, mindful to use Bianca's name instead.

She sounded annoyed as she told him that he was usually better than this in the morning. He rolled over and got his first look at her, a proper look in actual person, instead of glimpses through Other Nico's eyes, or the previous night from the lower angle.

His eyes were instantly drawn to the row of 0's followed by a 1, separated by colons, printed on her right arm. It looked suspiciously like a counter, or a timer.

Only, there was 8 slots, way more slots beyond the usual seconds, minutes and hours, or even if the person used milliseconds.

He had never seen this in his dreams.

Then again, he hadn't paid much attention to details.

Still.

He must have stared for a little longer than he intended, for Bianca made another impatient sound and told him that he had a counter of his own, if he was so interested in it, he should look at his own instead.

Nico flushed a little, before apologizing for it.

She gave him a funny look, a hint of suspicion clear in her eyes. "Come on, you're up now. Get changed, we need to go. Or I'll just go without you," she stated clearly before waltzing out of the door.

Barely the start of the day and I'm already screwing it up, Nico thought as he pulled out the outfit mirror-him had been kind enough to leave hanging in the closet. Just like what I had expected. He changed quickly, the skill perfected after almost years of almost being late for school due to the lack of an alarm clock that could actually wake him up.

He was almost out of the door when he glanced down at the glaring lack of a counter on his arm.

Going back to the closet, he rifled through it for a jacket that he liked. Pulling it on, he picked up the bag left to the side of the table before running down the stairs and out of the house to catch up with Bianca.

She was in a car when he got there.

A Rolls-Royce that he probably wouldn't even have gotten to touch back home.

He refused to be thrown off by that, although he knew that father never had a car. Of course, it was a little harder to stopper his reaction when he realized that his mother was the one driving.

His glimpses of his life in his dreams was limited to snatches of his life in school, so he had never gotten to see his mother. No matter the fact that she had always preferred Bianca, she had never treated him badly. Even though he never said it out loud, Nico had missed having her around. Maria had aged gracefully, maintaining her regal air of authority. She caught his eyes in the rear view mirror and smiled at him. Thankfully, she looked back to the road before she could see his reaction.

Bianca simply ignored him, glaring out of the window. That did not sit right with him. From what he had seen in his dreams, the two of them got on quite well. Sure, they had not sat together during lunch break for a while now, but nothing had ever indicated that Bianca did not like him. What went wrong?

It occurred to Nico that it was entirely possible that the dreams were not connected to this world.

That made more sense, actually. Not that it would matter. He was here on a scientific journey. Besides, no matter how bad things might be here, it could not be as bad as life in reality.

And if it was, well.

It's just one day.

Wasn't it?


	5. Going Through With It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was only supposed to be just one day in someone else's life, to see what the world could have been like if things had only been the slightest bit different.  
> When the time was 3:59 and he couldn't get back, though, Nico started to realise just how much can go wrong when you climb through the looking glass without looking to make sure that this was a two-way passageway first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is really a filler. It's mainly to provide you with more information on this world, and how I envision it would work. I hope it does things well enough that the thoughts don't look too out of place. Read and Review!
> 
> Disclaimers: I am not Rick Riordan. I do not own anything you might recognize. This story is a work of fiction, using the characters from Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus, with a plot that is a mash-up of plots from a few books and movies. As such, it's not marked as a crossover.
> 
> Warnings: Guy x guy pairing. The romance is not the main plot, but it is an important subplot, so if you do not like this, click the back button. Rated for mild cussing that might occur somewhere in the near future. The characters are slightly out of character, too.

 

'Thoughts'  
"Speech"  
_Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories_

* * *

**Going Through With It**

School was… enlightening.

After they had gotten out of the car, Bianca walked off without a word, leaving Nico staring after her. He then looked down at the timetable used as a bookmark in the book his doppelganger had been reading. Most of the subjects were different.

After the first couple of classes, he came to the conclusion that the person he was in this world was really, really smart. And had accelerated in his classes.

It was either that, or the syllabus here was simply vastly different with varied difficulty level across the subjects.

Most of the things taught here was harder than back at home, although it could just be that everything was not the same at all

During the science lessons, instead of standard pure Biology, Chemistry and Physics, like the ones he took back at home, they had weird topics like time science, biochemical electricity, mechanical science and aerodynamic fluxations, physiology and possible origins and defences of the MaiVisto (he really need to start reading up to figure out what that was, since it popped up quite a few times, even once in a discussion about military school). They also had compulsory self-defence lessons. Which, hey, was good and all that, except, they were taught to use guns, or make-shift ray gun-like things, during the lessons.

Even for lessons that should have remained the same, there was differences too. For instance, in literature, they had an entire set of readings – books that were a semi-alternate version of the classics they were required to buy in the school book list back home. Then, in history, they don't have anything about the world wars and civil wars, or even the different presidents (or their equivalents of that), instead, it was about the founding of the Colonies, the theoretical existence of the Rosetta Colony (it reminded Nico of the theory behind the lost city of Atlantis), different political parties that once reigned and the Colony disagreements, etcetera. All in all, it left Nico completely lost. Bamboozled. Flummoxed. Because, yes. They were encouraged to use those words during English class here.

It gave Nico a sudden and hard-to-reign-in urge to start wiping the place down. That urge only increased as he opened the locker and found it in a complete mess. Seriously, doesn't his doppelganger know better than to haphazardly stuff everything into the locker without arranging them properly, or shelving them? Or even just stacking them neatly, aligning them against the wall.

He needed to find the notes, though. Wincing a little, he started going through the pile of  _junk_. That was when Percy rested a hand on Nico's shoulder. Nico stilled at the contact, trying to figure out just how Percy managed to creep up on him. He was usually more alert than this.

Automatically, he had stiffened, and Percy noticed. His response was to squeeze Nico's shoulder gently. Nico forced himself to relax so as not to rouse more suspicion. After he relaxed, it was not entirely too hard to allow himself to melt into the contact.

He did not react when Percy kissed him on the neck softly and muttered, "Kitten."

The bell saved him by ringing, signalling the start of the next lesson. Percy detached himself from Nico, wandering off to his next class, leaving behind a smile and butterflies in his stomach.

Nico shook it off. Scientific journey. Research material. 'Concentrate on that,' he told himself firmly. 'It's only one day. Make the best of it, find out as much as possible.'

It was a tough thing to do, keeping his distance, given that Percy had the habit of waiting for him during lunch period. They sat in the corner of the school, away from the field and everyone else, and Percy rolled his sleeves up.

It occurred to Nico, then, just what it was about this place that made everything even more…different.

Unlike back home, where most people wore revealing clothes (especially the girls, not that he was pointing fingers), here, everyone wore jackets. Long pants, long sleeves. They wore almost the same clothes, too, off the conveyer belt. It was all so…  _uniformed_.

The other thing he realised was that every single person he passed, even the teachers, had the same 'tattoo' (he still did not know exactly what it was). He came to the conclusion that it must signify something, even if the teachers had different digits, whereas all the students only had 0's.

And, alright. That was weird, but it could just be a custom? Or, a school thing. Until, of course, he was walking home with Bianca and saw that little kid, who might be five, and his younger sister, who was still in the pram, and realised that both of them had that 'tattoo' to.

The most disturbing thing, though, was the fact that no one here looked to be over the age of twenty-five. What happened to those who were older? Were they shifted to another region? Except, when the parents came to pick up their children, there were none above twenty five, even if their child was his age. Perhaps older.

Now that he thought of it, their mother did not look to be older than twenty five either.

Do they just stop aging when they hit twenty five? But how?

He needed to get to the library. It was always well stocked, there would certainly be enough information there. After school, he walked home with Bianca, who had waited for him. She spent the whole trip talking to Connor, though, pointedly ignoring Nico. It left Nico wondering exactly what the dynamics between the siblings really was. Didn't mirror-Nico say that he was up at 4:00 in the morning as he had just driven Bianca and Percy to the club and back, never mind that he was not yet sixteen?

So, why was she pretending that he did not exist?

When Connor walked off, she promptly informed him that she had something to attend to, some club that required her attendance, and that, since their mother was busy today, he was free to do anything he wanted to do. Without so much a glance backwards, she stalked off down the road opposite the one Connor took, leaving Nico a little confused. Was it something he had done?

It worked for him, though. He visited the library as he had originally planned to. Just, this time, his goal was not just the science of this world, how it works. He was going to look up on the part that he had clearly missed. The reason why mirror-him was so eager to switch places with him. Normal people would not agree to such a suggestion so easily, after all.

The winding path leading up to the building door not fully paved, and it was worn not by use, but by neglect. The patches of cobble stones here and there clearly had not been replaced for a very long time. The building itself was older, too, with no evidence of attempts at maintenance, or even renovation and repainting. It felt so much more… isolated. Deserted.

It was pretty obvious that it had not been visited by people for a while.

Nico hoped that it had not been abandoned too long ago.

The door swung open easily, revealing an empty hall. It was dusty and the feeling made him uneasy. Nico entertained the notion of leaving, but he dismissed it soon. He was already here, and the books were still here even if the people weren't.

There was a small corner besides the librarian's counter, the place where the history books used to be placed in. He hoped that they did not change the arrangement of books – he really didn't want to search through the whole place in search of the history section.

When he did, eventually, leave the library, it was with a ton of apprehension and a newfound paranoia. A heightened sense of having eyes trained on him. It left him with a constant need to look over his shoulder every now and then to check that there was no one there, despite the fact that it was made clear by the books that none of the aliens (named by the people of Earth the MaiVisto) could possibly enter colony.

It was made equally clear that no one could see the aliens, though, which was why they were named what they were in the first place.

The books and the reports spoke of the stars that fell from the sky and wrought devastation on the major cities on the day of the invasion, how they destroyed humankind and almost all other living things, except for the plants. There were some pictures of the cities right after the invasion – lifeless and empty.

Still.

Dead.

As always, of course, there was that handful of survivors who figured out how to hide from something you could not see. They found a way to communicate with other patches of survivors around the world, spreading the message on some of the weaknesses and trying to fight back with makeshift weapons.

This little groups formed their own communities in their stronghold, creating places the MaiVisto could neither touch nor see – the tourists who had been in Moscow built a cage the kept the aliens out, some of the scientists on an expedition built a small, floating 'island' fort in the middle of the oceans close to the Antarctic, whereas some people in Venice built themselves a wall of glass surrounding the city, half in the water and half out of it. This places expanded as more survivors arrived, expanding to become cities, which eventually connected and became the first three colonies – Tartarus, Atlanta and Olympia.

There was a falling out of sorts between the colonies, though, but there was no real records. Those that did record the event had their own versions of what had happened, but all agreed that Tartarus was destroyed, leaving behind only ruins of a once flourishing colony.

Recently, however, the existence of the Tartarus Colony was erased from history books, as, on top of the fact that there was no official records of such a colony having been around, there was no one with families who had actually came from there. There was no artefacts that could have originated from Tartarus either, meaning that those few sources that listed Tartarus as a colony was gone, and there only were two founding colonies left in documented history.

It became a ghost city, an urban legend lumped together with the Amazons, an outlaw group that had abandoned the Colonies because they did not agree with the ideal, or something like that.

He'd been forced to stop there, as the sun had went down and he was probably expected back home. His mind was now filled with conspiracy theories though.

There had been something off about this place, he knew, but now that he knew, he just could not wait to get back home. To his own reality. No matter how bad real life was, at least it was safer than this place could ever be. It can't compare.

As he prepared for bed, he knew instantly that he must be doing something wrong. Bianca kept staring at him, although she said absolutely nothing. It did not matter to him, though, he wanted to get back home. He would not have to deal with this tomorrow, anyway.

Of course, he fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion and overload of information the moment he fell into bed. His internal alarm clock woke him up at 3:57, thankfully.

Instantly, he was more energised, and he shoved the covers back eagerly, getting into the bathroom and shutting the door behind him.

It felt like an eternity had passed before the mirror surface rippled.

The relief was short-lived.

Instead of the mirror-him, or even just the bathroom, he found himself staring at a blank, grey wall that stretched across the entire span of the mirror.

A ball of panic inevitably rose in him, knotting him into an anxious almost-mess. He kept his composure as he placed his palm against the mirror, pushing gently and watching as it sank into the quicksilver surface. Perhaps this was just an error, and he could still get back.


	6. Stranded

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was only supposed to be just one day in someone else's life, to see what the world could have been like if things had only been the slightest bit different.  
> When the time was 3:59 and he couldn't get back, though, Nico started to realise just how much can go wrong when you climb through the looking glass without looking to make sure that this was a two-way passageway first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's just say that Nico's not going to be happy about what's happening to him here. Of course, he's doing a good job, retaining a sense of normalcy, but he'll crack under the stress soon, and it's not going to be pretty. Not now, though. I'm not that mean.
> 
> On a side note, I'm now working on the sequel, Rosetta 51.
> 
> Leave a review when you're done with this chapter!

'Thoughts'  
"Speech"  
_Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories_

* * *

**Stranded**

Instead of going straight through, he encountered a wall, or a solid. Whatever it was, he couldn't pass through it. Pushing at it did not help – it adamantly refused to budge.

He pulled his hand back out and stared in semi-horror at the grey expanse. There was a part of him that was fascinated by the discovery that it was possible to either half-seal, or block, a formed portal. It even managed to temporarily override the horrific discovery that he was possibly stuck here for good now, unless he could unblock this thing. 'Thank you, scientific curiosity,' he thought sarcastically.

Before he could try again, though, the mirror sort of shivered. The wall rippled, vanishing to show a reflection of the bathroom on his side once more. He was left standing, gaping at the mirror with the realisation that he would have to be someone else for at least another day sinking in.

Taking a deep breath, he tried to convince himself that this could just be a glitch. Even if this was not just a crappy game. Maybe tomorrow, the wall would be gone. Besides, this gives him more time to find out more, doesn't it?

He found that he could not bring himself to be excited, though. He wanted out of this. He hadn't thought this decision through when he first spoke up, and look where it landed him.

He spent the second day contemplating the things that could possibly have caused the blockage, and what he could do about it. Directly after school, he made a beeline for the library. This time, instead of reading up about this world, he started inhaling books on portals, alternate universes and parallel worlds.

Much to his dismay, most of the materials here was not that much different from the information he had discovered in his little session with Leo.

Speaking of Leo…

'He's going to have a field day with this,' Nico thought dryly, imagining Leo's reaction if he was the one here instead of Nico. 'Alternate Universes indeed.'

If there was only one person more excited about science and technology, it would be Leo.

Back to his books.

By the end of the relatively unproductive session, the only new information he gleaned was that while the majority of it was theories about portals, most of it was proposed theories. Nothing was proven. Apparently, most of the people here did not believe that a portal to a parallel world was possible, either. What happened was probably a natural phenomenon, one that just happened to connect him and his doppelganger. Something that he had no way of figuring out how to duplicate.

Something might never happen again.

Shoving that pessimistic thought away, he sat down on the covered toilet seat and waited. When the portal did, eventually came back, he utterly refused to be deterred by the grey, solid surface that just proved to be not just a glitch.

Not wasting any time, he started searching for an edge, for some place to use as a leverage and push the blockage away, or just to secure a way around this thing. All four sides stretched on, though, beyond his reach.

When it ended, he blinked at it. Narrowing his eyes, Nico tried to glare the mirror back into being a portal. Obviously, it did not work. Nico stamped out the bit of panic that swelled up at the thought of acting for another day. The urge to start dusting off the counter was not so easily pushed aside, though.

Nico ended up stalking back to his bed to escape from the toilet – the mirror and the dust on the counter. He could not fall asleep, though. His mind refused to shut down. It was as he stared at the closed door to the toilet that he dimly recalled something he had read in one of the books during the session with Leo.

It had stated that for every connection established between the worlds, a balance would be struck. Should items be exchanged, the balance might be upset and it could seal itself off if un-stabilised.

If the portal had, indeed, been sealed, though, wouldn't the connection have been severed? Then, there would be no reason for the portal to even appear at all. There was a flaw in the logic, one that Nico clung to. He had to have something to work with, after all.

He'll fix that problem, the glitch, whatever it was that made the grey expanse appear.

If everything failed, he would just find another way to get back. He won't get disheartened by the discovery that it was most likely impossible to make his own portal back home.

He refused to be stuck here forever.

He semi-drifted through his third day. This was when he found the second biggest reason he would not be able to stand living here – all the people who were his friends in his own reality hated him here. At least, Rachel and Reyna does. Jason, apparently, did not quite notice him, as he was too focused on Bianca, while Leo just did not know he existed, period.

Which.

Even back home, when the world largely ignored him, he had, at least, the four of them. Them, a couple of people associated with them, and Hazel. Hazel.

Hazel, who, like Jason, did not quite realise he existed.

That hurt a lot more than he would have thought, but maybe that was just because he could not stop seeing her as the sister who had picked him up from the all-time low of his life. Something he might revisit soon, if he wasn't given a break from this 'pretending to be someone else until he could get home' show.

As Rachel laughed at him for getting his answers wrong during literature, he gritted his teeth mentally and just stared down at his book, wondering what went wrong with him in this world. Staring unseeingly at his book, he noticed that there was a few faded smudges in between the lines for the first eight lines. He frowned a little, reaching for an eraser to clean up the book when a shadow fell over him.

Looking up, he realised that it was Rachel.

She smiled at him a little smugly. "Finally decided to stop being such a stick in the mud and start being a rebel? Or is it because you simply can no longer keep up with your work? Poor thing, if that's the case. I wonder what your mother would think when she finds out that you would no longer have a perfect score."

Without waiting for a response, she simply stalked off.

Nico's hand was frozen on the way to the pencil case as he stared after her. He saw, in his peripheral vision, that the students from the next class were streaming in and some of his classmates were staring at him, but he simply could not be bothered by them.

What did he do wrong? What the hell did he do to make her despise him so much?

The Rachel he knew never taunted anyone. The only people she mocked were bullies who tried to belittle her, or anyone else. He drew a blank when he tried to remember an incident in which she deliberately sought someone out to jeer at them. No matter what, she was not a mean person by nature. What happened here?

Was it just him? He had always known that she was someone you wanted on your side, but never once had he considered the possibility of her being anything other than a friend. Was this what she was like to people she considered her…

Enemies?

As he tried to comprehend this, a hand slammed down on the table, jolting him upright.

"Hey, day dreamer, get the hell out of this seat. It's my seat now."

Nico glared up at the newcomer once he got his wits back. He did sweep his belongings into his bag, though. He did not want to be late for his next class, after all.

He was starting to hate this place.

As he stared at the mirror for the fourth time in a row, from this side of the mirror, he could not fight the frustration anymore. He had tried every method he could find, all the way up to using hammers and other tools.

Of course, nothing worked.

Any damage done simply merged back after he pulled away, or even just drag his tools to the left or the right. When his time was close to running out, he stayed put. Of course, he was expelled from the mirror before it returned to being a perfectly innocent mirror.

It spat him out, though.

Thankfully, it only threw him off a little. Nico glared at the mirror. Why wouldn't anything work?

The fourth afternoon, he came back from the library with a load of theories and tools he could build to get through the block. His current working theory is that although the block was like quicksilver, or corn-starch, if he were to drive an object straight through it with enough force, it might leave a gap.

Of course, he knew that there was a very high chance that it would not work, and, as it turned out, it most definitely did not work. The nail sunk into the mirror and simply did not return. As he had not hammered it through, it must have been absorbed by the substance.

By the fifth day, though, he discovered that he had exhausted the resources available. He continued his hunt, though, looking for other ways to achieve a breakthrough. That night, when he got home, Bianca cornered him.

Nico had figured that, for whatever reason, Bianca disliked him in this world. For her to confront him about his behaviour while looking this worried, there must be something he was doing really, really wrong. Not really understanding, he played along, making a mental note to start paying more attention to how he behaved in public. In the past few days, it must have slipped his mind that he was supposed to be someone else here.

He reassured her that he was fine, silently promising himself that he would get back home, and mirror-him could deal with this. He felt like he was being really mean, for a moment, before he decided that there would probably be a mess back home for him to clean up, too, so this was only fair.

Trying to drive the metre-long shoe-rack leg through did not work that night. It met with resistance no matter how far he pushed, and he had to stop when there was only a little bit left, less he risk it being swallowed up like the nail had been, previously. Yanking it back out, he watched silently as the mirror returned to being the stubbornly normal thing it was supposed to be. Nico then got to work fixing the leg back to the rack.

The next day, he read up on magic.

Yes, he was that desperate.

There was nothing more for it, was there? Might as well go all out. At least then he could say that he had tried.

Nothing in the books worked. He had nit-picked at them previously, of course, but he had to try, right? So he had taken those that looked the most possible. The only thing he got out of that night was the fact that magic, apparently, does not exist in this world either.

Even if aliens and other things that are only possible in science fiction does.

Nico was suddenly struck by the thought: What if they do exist in his world, just, in the near future and not in the past?

It pushed him to redouble his efforts. There was nothing much he could do anymore, though.

He tried, every night, with various objects and other Wiccan stuff that he could get his hands on, but he eventually exhausted all his avenues. Staying up every night was taking its toll, too, and even the teachers were worried.

Apparently, he was a straight A's student here.

Figures.

Balancing schoolwork and life with this…side project was tough, and he knew that he was running out of steam. Everything did not quite match his own memories and expectations, and it left him reeling most of the time. It's not that he hated this world, he's just sick and tired of the expectations this place have of him and the roles people expect him to play, damn it, he wasn't their perfect boy, he was the broken one from another world that made a mistake in asking to switch places, he can't do this.

He just wanted to go home and be done with this.

Curl up in a blanket and forget about the world for a while.

To top it off, Percy kept being so nice to him. It made him so guilty, because it wasn't him. The person Percy liked was his doppelganger, not the replacement, and Percy didn't know. It felt like he was forcing Percy to cheat on his look-a-like with him, and that went against his morals. Ignoring Percy got him the kicked puppy look, and it made him feel even worse than he already did. Percy wasn't supposed to be involved.

Nico admitted defeat by night number twelve.

If he wanted out, he'll have to either work on an alternate path, or search for another portal that just happens to link their worlds. The odds are slim, but well. He needed something to work towards.

Otherwise he would really succumb to the temptation of just coming clean and then running for it. Even if there was nowhere for him to run to, in a world that is populated by invisible monsters. Aliens.

Whatever.

If he wanted people to back off and let him search in peace, though, he would have to convince them that he was fine right now, and nothing was wrong.

Wouldn't that just be such a walk in the park?

Sleep deprivation was not helping in his cognitive functions though. He'll come up with something when he was done sleeping. Speaking of which, it was Monday.

Again.

He wanted to groan at the thought that he only had a few hours to try and catch some sleep, as Bianca always insisted on waking him up early. He did not really want to go to school either.

Back on his bed – it was his now, since mirror-him was not around, he tried to sleep.

Of course, he failed miserably at it, just like he did at everything else he had tried to do recently, including schoolwork.

Letting out a whine, he rolled over, opening his eyes, ignoring the blurriness as he glared at the bunk bed above. Even sleep was too much to ask for now?!

Sure, why not, his brain replied. After everything that's already wrong with this world, it's being unable to sleep that you're complaining about. Why not just go ahead and list everything that went wrong about this place from day one to day twelve and onwards.

Maybe he really was that out of it. Whatever the reason was, he actually started making list.

Firstly, there's no Google here. There's not even an internet, and, while Nico was not one of those addicts, when he had no idea what to do about something, he usually starts with Google. Or a search engine. Then, of course, he moves on to read up more. But, here, there's no such thing as the internet, there's no such thing as a smartphone, an iPhone or an s3, no such thing as a wireless network.

Secondly, everybody hates him. Even his sister. His best friends and his half-sister and everyone at school. Even if he was good at schoolwork, nobody likes him. And now that he's not good at schoolwork anymore, even the teachers, who basically tolerates him, wouldn't like him either. The hell is wrong with him here? Why? Well, Percy likes him, but he's the only one. Even Annabeth despises him.

And this world.

It's something straight out of a dystopian story. Having figured out that the row of digits must be significant in some way, Nico had read up on it. And he almost puked at what he found out.

Using time as a currency? He would applaud the genius who thought that it would be a good idea to make "Time is money" a literal thing, except he really could not imagine such a world as being one anyone would want to live in. They don't even have a choice about living this way, it's either accept what they had or go out and face invisible things on their own. Revolts were not possible either, shut down the timer and you're dead. Why would anyone initially subject themselves to this?

This place is like a horror story version of the 1900's, set in the future, with way more science and aliens and way less technology.

It's backwards, that's what it was.

No wonder his doppelganger switched it up with him.

No matter how much he hated it here, though, he would have to learn to deal with it. It's going to be reality for him, after all. Until he got some way to get back.

He has no intentions of spending the rest of his life here.

To navigate this place, he would have to figure out how this world really works. Aside from the row of digits, he would have to relearn history and rewire his brain to think the way he was expected to think in this world, if he wanted people to not be suspicious of his behaviour. He had kind of screwed that up, he just hope that it's not too late to make a change.

4:37.

His mind drifted to Hazel, wondering how she was faring in school now. Hazily, he realised that he had never once wondered just how Bianca was doing when it came to schoolwork. He would apologize about thinking of Hazel whenever he thought about his sister, especially in this world, since Hazel most definitely wasn't his sister here, but he found that it was harder for him to accept that now.

Hazel was the one who had cared, after all.

Bianca had always just been a dream.

This was a chance to live with her, though. No matter how much she seemed to dislike him, in general, he was going to try and make amends for whatever he had done in this world. Whether or not she would understand. He was not about to let this be something he would regret in the future.

This was his foreseeable future, anyway.

He'll just make the best he could of it.


	7. Being Him

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was only supposed to be just one day in someone else's life, to see what the world could have been like if things had only been the slightest bit different.  
> When the time was 3:59 and he couldn't get back, though, Nico started to realise just how much can go wrong when you climb through the looking glass without looking to make sure that this was a two-way passageway first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I skipped a week last week because of life, which is why I'll try to get chapters 8 & 9 up by next Sunday, alright? There's major overhaul to the story in general, too, but it should not affect the rate I'll update that much. Leave a review after reading!

'Thoughts'  
"Speech"  
_Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories_

* * *

**Being Him**

_"_ _Hey, Nico, are you sure you're fine?" Leo asked, looking really concerned. Nico did not reply. "Hello? Earth to Nico?" He wind milled his hands around, in front of Nico, trying to get his attention. Nico looked at him, giving him a faint smile, his mind clearly somewhere else._

_Leo frowned._

_"_ _Really, Nico. Are you sure there's nothing wrong back home?"_

_His hand on Nico's shoulder did the trick. Nico snapped back into focus, seemingly having registered, finally, that there was someone quite desperately trying to hold a conversation with him._

_"_ _I, yeah. There's nothing wrong back home."_

_Leo considered his words. Apparently, coupled with a tentative grin, it was enough to convince him, and he let himself be led away to another topic easily, seeming to have forgotten about this particular conversation._

_It felt a little too fake, a little too forced, to Nico, but then again, so does everything, so maybe it was real? Whatever it was, he wanted…_

Trying to be him was wearing Nico out.

Being shaken awake earlier than usual… well, it took a while, but he finally got the hang of it, so it's alright. At least this time round, he could actually fall back asleep after being woken because of the dreams. It's dealing with the day to day life that was draining his energy.

It starts with not being allowed to sleep in a little, because apparently his doppelganger was a morning person, and, Bianca, not knowing any better, expected the same from him. It continues in him sometimes seeing something he knew that Leo would find amusing, turning around, about to point that out, just to realise that Leo wasn't there. That Leo probably does not even know that he existed. The same applies for Reyna, Rachel, Jason, even Frank and Hazel. There was no one there, at least, no one that actually mattered was ever around.

Then there was school. There was convoluted science that was so convoluted it was almost nonsensical, especially to someone who grew up with a different set of scientific laws and theories and a firm belief that something substantial with organs and all that is made out of light and is impossible to see is, theoretically, impossible, and then, there was literature.

Basically, all the classics. The books he had read so many times he had basically memorized everything there was line by line, so the minor differences were minute enough that they sometimes slip by unnoticed, resulting in slip-ups in his answers as the professor started picking on him to answer.

Discounting that, there was the people. Rachel, who never fails to miss a chance to pick out flaws in arguments he presented, and Reyna, who always gives him the coldest, hardest glare she could muster, one he had never thought he would be on the receiving end of, whenever he got something right, or if he so much as brushed past her.

The icing on this perfectly baked disaster was Percy. Everything came back to Percy, doesn't it? This whole expedition started because he wanted a way out. Wanted a chance, to see what another world would be like, so he could forget about how much of a disappointment he was, to his father, to Hazel, to his friends, to Percy. Then, now, Percy wouldn't leave him alone.

Which, if he were back at home, he would be perfectly fine with. Except, this wasn't real. The guy Percy wanted wasn't him, and it just wasn't fair. This felt too similar to what Percy had done to him, except it's actually worse, because he understands what it's like to find out that someone's been cheating on you, and he couldn't even dissuade Percy from staying around him, because to do that would be to ruin the relationship for his doppelganger,

When did his life become such a dramatic mess? Nico wondered in despair.

Surprisingly, though, no one ever saw anything wrong with him. It helps, of course, that aside from Percy and Bianca, no one actually spoke to him, with the exception of maybe Travis and Connor. Although it stung a little to realise that he was just as invisible here as he was back home, if not more so, he was silently glad for how much easier it made everything.

Of course, it would make sense that things would get shot to hell on a Wednesday, because Mondays were too cliché and Friday would be too merciful. No, best let it be in the middle of the weekdays, so you would still have to deal with school.

It was English.

The afternoon was hot, and the heat weighed down on him rather heavily. The lesson itself was not interesting, and Nico was on the brink of falling asleep, the strain of cramming knowledge he should have accumulated over the past fourteen years in a week's worth of time making itself known.

_"_ _Nico?" Hazel asked. He looked up at her in response._

_"_ _Yes?"_

_"_ _You've been rather… different lately. Is there anything going on that I could help with?"_

_Nico stared at her. It made sense that she latched on, but it was still jarring to find that someone here actually cared for him. That aside, he had no idea what to say. He stuck to the standard, "I'm fine."_

_She frowned a little, not entirely convinced, but not outright pushing either. Pursing her lips a little, she muttered, "I'm here for you, alright? If you need any…_

There was more to it, before and after, but that was really all Nico could remember as he stared up at his teacher, a little dazed at being dragged out of a dream so abruptly. Then, he almost winced when he saw how annoyed she looked, and how… he almost frowned.

Behind the teacher, Rachel wasn't smirking smugly at him this time. Instead, she seemed a little… suspicious?

He was forced to look back at the teacher, though, knowing that it wouldn't do to be caught staring at her. The lecture he was expecting did not come. Instead, she simply told him to stay behind after class.

Nico did.

The lecture, when it was delivered, was laced with concern and worry, though. The teacher was constantly asking if there was something wrong, telling him that if he needed help, they would always be there, and that his friends would be supportive too. That, if he needed someone to talk to about something, she was willing to listen, that there was nothing wrong with needing a little help at all.

Nico almost snapped at that, the urge to rant getting increasingly harder to resist. Yes, there was something wrong, there was something very, very, very wrong about this whole situation but there was no way he could ask for help for this, never mind the fact that there was no way they could help much anyway. Yes, he knew that his friends would be supportive, but they're not in this world, and really, he did not need to worry about a meddling teacher on top of everything he already have to deal with.

She had good intentions, though, and he had to begrudge her that. So, swallowing down his ire, he smiled at her and told her that everything was alright, he just hadn't been able to sleep for a while, that's all.

To her credit, she did not push for reasons, simply accepting his explanation. She sent him off after reiterating the fact that he was welcome in her office.

Nico had no intentions of ever going back there.

With the exception of that, the day ended much the same way the previous few did.

She must have spoken to his mother, though, since she started fussing the moment Nico stepped into the house. It would have been nice, if it had not put him under the spotlight. Even Bianca, who ignored him when she could, asked him if he was sick and needed to take a break from school. While he was monumentally tempted to say yes, if he did not show up in school, he would be drawing attention to himself. He couldn't handle the attention while trying to blend in. Fading into the background, unnoticed, is kind of hard to do while everyone is staring at you after all.

So, he said no.

She left him alone after that, although Nico could tell that she had not forgotten about their conversation.

The next few days went by as usual, with Rachel paying him more attention now. Instead of waiting for Literature to taunt him, she actually made an effort to locate him during breaks. Of course, she also put in effort to make sure he did not notice her hanging around, but she was not entirely inconspicuous when she was spying on him.

Nico doubled up on his reading, driven by the determination to understand everything he should have already known, if only to maintain his image here and divert the concern that would likely evolve into suspicion.

The daily 'preview' did not cease, too, and while it meant that he could at least keep an eye on his doppelganger's progress, it also made him homesick. He wanted to get back there.

Double the amount of studying and observing, as well as keeping up appearances, coupled with the general crap known as 'being him', the pressure was mounting and it was getting to him. Reining in his OCD was a monumental task, and if he does not find some way to release the pent up stress, he would crack under the pressure.

His solution? Take it all out on the library, since he couldn't do what he wanted at home.

Digging out the bucket from the closet, he went to the closest stream and dragged the bucket of water to the library and spent half of each afternoon scrubbing out the dirt and dust that had accumulated.

He dedicated at least half of each library session to the cleaning therapy.

It seems to have worked, since Bianca went back to ignoring him completely, and Rachel stopped following him around as much.

He was still really relieved when the weekends arrived, though. Bianca was busy this time, with a sleepover and a party, and their mother was visiting the Athens Colony to meet up with some other scientists during the conference to share ideas, before having her designs validated. If he was not wrong, she would be going on an expedition beyond the Colony walls with a group of people (there was a name for the organization they worked for, but Nico could not remember it for the life of him).

Of course, while he did not exactly approve of it, he could understand why it was necessary, since she was a scientist who made designs of weapons to be used against the aliens.

It also meant that he was finally alone, too, and he could really use the time to try and sort everything out.

He made the mistake of letting down his guard.

Therefore, when he entered the room, mostly focused on keeping the hot chocolate from spilling before he could set it on the table, he was not prepared for someone to just slam him against the recently-closed door and having him pinned by the throat.

The scalding drink splashed down his front as he dropped the mug in shock. 'Great,' he thought. 'Bruises and burns to make up for the faded bruises.' When he registered the identity of his assailant, though, the mug shattering on the floor went unnoticed, together with the pain from the burn left behind by the hot chocolate.

"You're not Nico. Who are you?"

The bright, blue eyes were filled with distrust.

Subconsciously, of course, he had expected to be confronted at some point of time. Perhaps about who he really was, or about what he was doing here. It was a matter of fact that no matter how good he was at acting, someone would eventually see through it. Even if he had constructed all his emotions properly, reacting as expected based off what little knowledge he had of his doppelganger and crafted his words carefully, he knew that all it takes was one wrong move to crumble the shaky foundations his lies were built on.

On top of that, he had not actually been doing a good job, anyway, most of the people who knew him had thought that there was something wrong, so Nico had just been waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It's only that, out of everyone he had considered would find out who he was, first, Jason never made it to the list.

It wasn't even because Jason was unnoticeable, or that he thought Jason was unobservant.

It's just, well, Jason was one of his only friends in his reality – or, the one he had before this. He had never once thought that Jason would be suspicious of him, or that Jason would distrust him, even if that Jason was from another universe, in a technical sense.

The shock removed his brain to mouth filter, too, he realised when he blurted out the answer without thinking it through.

"I am Nico. Just not the one that you know. Or, rather, not know that well."

When the words left his lips, though, he wished he had not said anything. Wincing a little, he shrunk back as far as he could when backed against the wall.

The violent response he had expected, for that answer, did not come.

Instead, he had Jason staring at him with a look that was half-worry, half-"do-you-think-I'm-an-idiot".

His fingers, wrapped around Nico's throat, tightened slightly, making him uncomfortably aware that this Jason probably had never seen him as a friend and therefore would not hesitate to hurt him, no matter how reluctant he may be to hurt Jason.

Thankfully, though, this Jason did not just finish him off, or beat him up to get some answers. Instead, he gave Nico a chance, one for which he would likely be eternally grateful for.

"Prove it."


	8. Trust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was only supposed to be just one day in someone else's life, to see what the world could have been like if things had only been the slightest bit different.  
> When the time was 3:59 and he couldn't get back, though, Nico started to realise just how much can go wrong when you climb through the looking glass without looking to make sure that this was a two-way passageway first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, another missed dateline, so, to make up for it, I've increased the word count! It's still not that long, but well. Also, have you had hot water dumped on you before? It hurts a lot, and the skin actually peels off, which well. I'm not going that far here, though, Nico has been through enough. It'll hurt for a while though. :P Read & Review!

'Thoughts'  
"Speech"  
_Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories_

* * *

**Trust**

He had two options.

He could be more sensible and realistic, and pretend that he had never said anything, then continue trying to live as his doppelganger.

Or, he could be reckless for one and just throw caution to the wind, never mind where that got him the last him he actually did that. He could tell the truth and try to gain Jason's support and help in trying to find his way back. Oh, he would be running the risk of sounding like even more of a madman than Jason already thought he was, and he knew that it was entirely possible Jason would not believe him regardless of what he did, but at least he would know that he had tried. That he had done things the way he knew he would not regret, for once, and that Jason had simply chosen not to believe him.

For a moment, he had been tempted to go for the first option.

It sounded a lot easier than the second option. Mind you, it just sounds easier, it is actually a hell lot harder, but he was tempted.

Without making a conscious decision, though, he awkwardly rolled up his left sleeve. It was hard, within the limited space, given how Jason had caged him against the door, but he managed, and Jason glanced down sceptically.

Nico could see the exact moment he realised what Nico was trying to show when he did what he had.

"You don't have a timer," he stated. It was clear that he was not looking for an affirmation, rather, it simply slipped out as he was startled. Regardless, Nico confirmed that it was true.

He got no reaction from Jason for that.

After a pause, Jason let go of Nico's throat, pushing the sleeve on Nico's other arm up too.

"How?" he asked, furrowing his brows a little now, looking confused. The disbelief was evident, both in his voice and his countenance.

"I told you. I'm not from this world. We met one night from different sides of the mirror, then, we switched."

"The mirror?" Jason sounded rather dubious.

Nico looked at the clock.

3:13 PM.

"Come back here at 3:50AM, I'll show you."

Jason looked at him doubtfully. "I think I'll just stay here with you."

There was a long pause then.

Nico looked away as he cleared his throat. "If you're alright with this, we could do some homework," he suggested.

Jason agreed, having nothing better in mind.

He kept on guard, though, as Nico excused himself to the bathroom to change his clothes. Nico kept quiet about how much the burn hurts, dressing it quickly with whatever was present in the bathroom before coming out.

They spent the rest of the day clearing their homework planners. It took a surprisingly long while to be done, and then they spent some more time in silence, staring at their completed work. Jason started talking about history then, filling up the silence that had gaped, and, for a while, Jason reminded Nico of his friend form back home. Suddenly, his mind wandered back to how things were going there. How well was mirror-him handling his life? What if Jason, or Leo, or, gods forbid, Reyna or Hazel, figured out that that was not him?

Stop worrying and thinking, Nico chided himself firmly. You cannot change anything anymore. This is currently your reality, and until you can get back, it will be your life. Just like your life would be his. Just trust that he can handle it.

Time passed reasonably quickly afterwards, and it was dinner time too soon. The two of them had instant noodles, since Nico was horrible at cooking, and, while Jason said that he could make a fairly decent meal, the refrigerator and the pantry were both devoid of edible food items. Apparently, mother only stocked up when she was going to cook.

After that, they sat there in an awkward silence for a while before Jason suggested they watch a movie to pass time. They ended up watching Rise Of The Guardians. They fell into a companionable mood after that, behaving as if they were friends. There was a debate on who was better, Jack Frost or Bunnymund, and it was 3:50AM before they knew it.

Picking himself up, he ignored the prickly feeling of unease. What if the portal does not appear this time, period? No one has ever been around when he saw the portal. Jason was here, though, and he did not want to let go of this possible friendship so easily.

Alerting Jason to the time, he brought him to the bathroom.

Picking himself up, he alerted Jason to that fact, and brought him to the bathroom.

Jason stared at the mirror for a long while. He then turned to Nico, the doubt returning in his eye. 'There's nothing there."

Nico glanced at the clock. 3:58AM.

"Just one more minute," he told Jason.

Still suspicious now, Jason turned back to the mirror.

The mirror rippled a little. Jason's expression was comical when the reflection disappeared, replaced by a solid, grey surface instead.

The clock read 3:59AM.

Jason reached out to touch the mirror.

He watched, clearly slightly fascinated, as the mirror surface appear to pull him in. Then, he frowned. "There's something here."

"Yeah," Nico said.

"You said that you came through here." Jason sounded slightly puzzled now.

"I did," Nico agreed. "We agreed on one day."

"One day?"

"One day," Nico echoed. "We switch places, one day. Then, I found this wall."

Jason started pushing.

"You can't get past it."

Jason paused, turning around to look at Nico.

"Why not?"

Nico shrugged. "I don't know," he admitted. "It was there when I tried to get back, and it remained there for the next few days. Until I can either remove it, or build a new portal somehow, I'm stuck here."

Jason went back to gaping at the mirror. It would be comical, if Nico had not been waiting for a better reaction than this. What if he decided to distance himself after this, just in case this sort of bad luck was contagious?

Although he sounded slightly disbelieving, when Jason finally did react, it was not to run away. Like a normal, sensible person. Rather, it was to reiterate, "Okay."

A little like a broken recording tape.

Finally, he told Nico that he believed him, he just needed time to process this, because 'holy schist this stuff actually happens, it's possible to get to another world, a world with weird stuff and another version of myself and the person who got stranded here is apparently a best friend of mine in that world and now he's in this world and I'm his friend not friend and I need time to get this fully stuck in my head.'

Nico wisely choose to keep quiet. He couldn't help the relief that flooded him when he realised that Jason was not just going to abandon him, and that he believed Nico, though. It relieved a weight he had not noticed was present until it was gone. He actually had a potential friend in Jason, now, and there was a high chance that they could become really good friends like they were in his past reality.

Maybe it was selfish to cling on to his past life and his image of someone that was not the person he was facing now, but still. It would be something reasonably familiar to fall back on.

They need not be enemies or strangers.

He had not realized just how much he had relied on his friends for companionship and other little things until they were absent from his life, and it was only when Jason showed signs that it was entirely possible he would not hate Nico that he figured out just how much he missed having his friends around, even if at times, they were annoying.

They had cared, and that was more than he could say for so many people in his life.

He knew that Jason had probably seen something in his eyes, for he reached out and hugged Nico. It was brief, but it was there and real. Nico fought not to just let go and allow himself to stop being  _him_.

Jason was still Jason's doppelganger.

A virtual stranger.

They settled down back on Nico's bunk.

For one long moment, they stared at each other, then the floodgates opened and Jason began to talk. He filled Nico in on his doppelganger's life, letting him know what he had not found out, starting from when they were both kids.

Apparently, the two of them used to be really close. They had practically been brothers, having grown up together due to the fact that their fathers had once worked together and always left one at the other's place for babysitting. There was a disagreement somewhere down the line, though, and they stopped being able to see eye to eye for certain issues. Then, they had a fall out when Jason came clean that he had a crush on Bianca, as it was clear that Jason's parents had had someone in mind for him right from the start and that if Jason pursued Bianca, he would only be leaving her heartbroken.

Jason had kept an eye out for him, though, when Bianca mentioned in the passing that something was off about her little brother. Nico had not seem suspicious when he was nice to him, which was why he had cornered Nico, as he knew that there was something really wrong, or odd, happening.

Which led to this encounter.

As Jason spoke, Nico lost himself in the companionship, the familiarity of this situation, how he and Jason would sometimes sit down on their bad days and just talk.

So, when Jason was done talking, Nico took over, telling him about some parts of his life back home – how Jason was basically his hero from the first time they met, when Jason stood up for him after finding him crying in the locker room after being laughed at and teased mercilessly for the entire first half of the year, resulting in a fight with people he had once called friends. How it led to him becoming an outcast, because he associated himself with the resident freak, and how they subsequently came to know Leo, Reyna and Rachel.

How they stuck together because, if they didn't look out for each other, no one else would look out for them. Because they were all the leftovers, after all, the freak show, comprising of Leo (The kid who had sat outside the workshop as it burnt down around his mother, too mute to say anything, accused of being an arsonist and a devil and sent into the system, shuttled around from foster home to foster home for being too loud and too nervous and for constantly running away, a kid whose dream as a kid was to build a dragon named Happy that would fly him to his mother), Reyna (The daughter of the local gang leader, found with blood on her hands the day her sister called the police to report the fact that their father was murdered by someone, raised on the streets because she had not been legal and only barely hanging on in school because one teacher saw her potential), Rachel (The 'psychic' who was almost sent into the psychiatric ward for an overactive imagination, kept drugged for the better part of her life before school for believing in monsters and gods, living in her own world, magic and reality being rather relative to her), him (The kid whose sister shone in everything and whose brilliant life was snuffed out by a single drunk driver who got careless, the boy who talked to shadows and air too much and too loudly, the kid who was too scrawny too small too weak and too helpless, the boy who disappeared from school and actually got into the mental hospital for having OCD and then breaking down, trying to commit suicide).

Gods.

They were all so messed up, weren't they?

Jason was the only one who was normal. Then again, normal was relative.

There were some parts he never said anything about, though. Like how Hazel had walked in and became the only light of his life, because that was dangerous territory, the messy 'relationship' with Percy and the mess that was called Percy being nice now, the fact that his mother had walked out on the family, because he was a failure and Bianca had always been better.

When he found that he couldn't bring himself to actually say any more, he simply went quiet and studied the patterns on his blanket. He did not want to see Jason judging, don't think he could bear it now. The sunlight had filtered through the heavy curtains, he noted dimly. Risking a quick look at the time, he almost winced.

They had been talking for really, really long.

When a long while passed by without a response from Jason, Nico started getting worried. Had he crossed a line he shouldn't have, a line he can't uncross?

He probably shouldn't have dumped his emotional baggage on Jason, he couldn't believe he let his rational filters disappear, but Jason, being there and willing to listen and hear him out, was something that had never failed to get him to spill.

He had been stranded, in an unfamiliar place with strange customs and laws, for weeks, even if Jason was a technical stranger, by being there, he had made this something slightly familiar, something Nico clung on and latched onto way too quickly.

Forgive him for being too quick to trust this time round.

The time passing made the silence weigh down with tension, and it made Nico's skin crawl. The burn started throbbing again, reminding him of its existence, a dull throb that was surprisingly hard to drown out. He started noticing that the cloth was excessively wrinkled. There were some eraser dust clumped together there, too, in the corner, from when they did homework on the bed earlier on.

"Look at me," Jason suddenly requested.

It startled Nico a little. It took a while for him to be able to meet Jason's eyes squarely, sure he would find rejection, possibly pity, too, there.

Instead of that, though, he found a sort of…muted awe and admiration? He blinked a little, not entirely sure what to make of it, or that he had interpreted the look correctly. Jason saved him the trouble, pressing on.

"Thank you."

Nico had nothing to say to that. Jason must have noticed, as he continued, "You trusted me enough to tell me, and I know that it wasn't easy for you to talk about that. Thank you for believing that I can be trusted."

"I…" Nico scrambled for some words he could use, coming up with nothing. Jason was thanking him for talking?

Jason stood up, then. Offering Nico his hand, he stated, "Come."

For a moment, Nico recalled Rachel offering to help him up before this disaster.

He blinked, refocusing on Jason, who was looking at him expectantly. Accepting the offered hand, Nico stretched slightly after he stood up.

Jason led him out of the room. Nico followed without much protest, knowing that there really was nothing much worse that could possibly happen. Besides, his instincts told him to trust Jason not to hurt him, and there was no reason for him to now.

As they went towards the door, though, Nico got a little wary.

"Jason?"

He did not respond.

Nico was given enough time to lock up the house before Jason led him to a car parked across the streets. "Jason?" Nico repeated.

"Do you trust me?" Jason asked in lieu of a reply.

Nico understood then. Keeping quiet, he buckled up in the shotgun seat, letting Jason lead. Jason drove him to the library, before doubling up, going back the way they came, only with shortcuts and long-way-rounds this time.

"What are you doing?" Nico asked, when Jason slid into a shadowed alley and turned off the engines.

"You trusted me with something important."

Nico wasn't sure what the appropriate response would be. Jason did not appear to require one, or expect one, though. Without looking at Nico, he continued, "I'll trust you with something important too."

That was when another car drove down the road they had driven past just now. It looked quite familiar, although it took Nico a while to realise that it was the same one he had saw when he first entered the car with Jason. He suddenly understood what Jason had been doing.

"Who's tailing us?"

"The Council," Jason replied after a pause. "Your father is a Creator that was a liability the Council does not really trust. Well, you're mother's a Creator too, but she's pretty clean, so if I'm not wrong, they're tailing you because they knew you were close to your father."

"Are they trailing me, or you? Wasn't your father a Creator, too?"

"They're trailing both of us. And yeah, he was one of the original three Creators, alongside your father and Percy's father," Jason remarked, almost offhandedly.

Another car drove by.

Nico was more distracted by Jason's words.

"Isn't Paul Percy's father?"

Jason looked at him, a question clear in his eyes, before he apparently decided that it was probably normal that Nico might knew more than he had told him. Or, that he could be horribly misinformed. "Paul is Percy's step father, but he was caught in a collapsed building a while ago." Seeing Nico's confusion, he elaborated, "Paul was a Creator, but he was in charge of the housings division. He was investigating."

"So, Poseidon is Percy's father?"

"Yeah," Jason confirmed.

The third car drove by, and Jason started up the engine.

"Clear now?"

"Usually it's only two, or three. I think that's all there is."

As they continued cruising along the road, Nico asked, "Where, exactly, are you taking me to?"

Jason drove for a while, checking the rear view mirror occasionally, before answering.

"We're going to meet the Demigods."


	9. The Demigods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was only supposed to be just one day in someone else's life, to see what the world could have been like if things had only been the slightest bit different.  
> When the time was 3:59 and he couldn't get back, though, Nico started to realise just how much can go wrong when you climb through the looking glass without looking to make sure that this was a two-way passageway first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nicknames! They'll have a super lengthy discussion about nicknames in this chapter. And yay, Nico would be friends with someone other than Jason! I should be able to post another chapter sometime this week, since we have a long weekend this time. Hope it's not too draggy. Read & Review!

'Thoughts'  
"Speech"  
Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories

* * *

**The Demigods**

Silence greeted their arrival.

"Hey," Jason said a little awkwardly, attempting to divert their attention.

It failed. The spotlight remained on Nico. He hovered a little awkwardly behind Jason, not entirely sure what was appropriate for him to do, or how he was expected to respond or react.

Rachel reacted for him.

"What did you bring him here for?!" she exclaimed, the disbelief evident in her voice. She stood up, looking at Jason as if there was something wrong with him.

Nico managed a poker face despite the loathing and dislike plain as daylight in her voice. He knew that she was rarely impulsive, that she was pretty level-headed. Even when she was insulting him in class, she took time to think through her words. This was pretty important, then.

"He could be really helpful," Jason begun, trying to placate her.

Reyna did not wait for him to continue. "What did you do to him?" Reyna directed the question at Nico, a cold fury hardening her voice, accusation clearly there.

"Why do you assume he did something to me?" Jason responded immediately, sounding a little indignant.

"No offense, man, but you are quite gullible sometimes," Leo pointed out, eyeing Nico with some wariness now that the initial shock of finding him at the door behind Jason wore off.

"How do you even know that we can trust him?" Hazel added.

"We could at least hear him out first, before judging," Frank suggested.

Nico wondered exactly what his doppelganger had done, to garner the dislike, or, at the very least, the distrust, of all of them. Even Percy, who was standing at the back, had looked incredulous and speechless at Frank's suggestion.

Percy, who was supposed to be his boyfriend.

Noticing their expressions, Frank hastily added, "But I'm not defending him, or anything like that. It's just not entirely fair to just judge first without giving him a chance. There must be a reason Jason trusts him."

They considered his words for a moment, before looking at Nico expectantly. He stared back, unsure of what was expected. Jason nudged him a little.

"Uh…" He should just say something. There's nothing much he could lose anyway. The only thing that might go wrong, of course, is that they get fed up when he continues having nothing to say, or that they don't believe him and Jason. The problem, though, was that he had no idea what he could, or should, say.

He wasn't prepared for this. As they continued looking at him, he truly wished that a portal would just appear under him and take him somewhere else. He did not break eye contact with them, though, staring back at them.

"Show them what you showed me?" Jason prompted when the silence dragged.

He rolled up his sleeve, grateful for the suggestion. And the distraction. As one, they gaze had been drawn to his arm. Then, it travelled back up, filled with suspicion and incredulity this time. Nico returned his arm to its positions by his side, challenging them to question him silently.

Hazel asked on behalf of the rest.

"Why do you have no time counter?"

The answer Nico had prepared was stuck in his throat. It sounded absurd, even in his head, so how much worse would it sound when he verbalised it? Thankfully, Jason answered for him again. "He switched with the Nico we know, so he's technically a stranger to this world. We can trust him, he's not really on the Council's side."

"Then who is he?" Reyna asked.

"Nico di Angelo, just, from a parallel universe. The original agreement, of course, was one day, but the portal got blocked. I couldn't get back anymore." Reyna looked at Nico with distaste, before turning back to Jason.

"How did you end up trusting him so easily?"

Nico knew that he should be offended that she was clearly dismissing his presence. He understood her too well, though, and this was one of her defensive mechanisms. She hated it when she lost control of the situation and has no idea where things were going, and, well, this was a prime example of a situation she could not control. That's what make her a good leader, as well as a bad one. She's too organised. And, she's kind of better than him when it comes to avoiding things she did not want to think about. Which, of course, meant that when she lost control of the direction things were going in, she simply pushed it aside and waited for it to go away.

"He hasn't lied to me, Reyna. That aside, he has no idea how this world works, it's best that we get him on our side before he figure that the Council is the right side to be on."

"Why would we even want him on our side?"

Rachel.

Figures.

Honestly? Nico had never once thought he would see the day that both Reyna and Rachel would hate him with the hatred they usually reserved for Octavian and his jocks.

Jason's answer caught him off guard. "Leo's the only real engineer we have here aside from Annabeth, and he's the only one who truly understand machines like the newest weapons against the MaiVisto, as well as time counters. Even then, Leo, I'm truly sorry, but you don't know enough about these machines, especially the time counters, to let us make too much difference. Nico has that bit of knowledge we lack, though, and he would be contributing to our cause as much as we would be helping him get used to this world. Mutually beneficial."

Immediately, Annabeth had a rebuttal. "If he's not from this world, how could he know more than us?" Nico had thought of that, too. Honestly, he was struggling to keep his head above the waters in school, all this things were clearly extracurricular, and there was no way he would know more than them.

Jason, apparently, disagreed. "He's an outsider, sure. Their world is more technologically advanced than ours, though, even if ours is more scientifically evolved. But that's the thing, you see. We all grew up in this place, we've been raised to think about things a certain way, and we all know that that certain way had gotten us into the rut we're stuck in now. We can't move forward, but if we stop, we would lose all the progress we have made. That's why we need new blood, and this is someone who is entirely new to the whole system and the whole world. He could possibly help us find new flaws or loopholes in the things we overlooked, because everything was too familiar to us."

He wasn't done.

Taking a breath, he continued on his spiel. "All that aside, I bet you don't know that Nico was actually good at science, no matter how abysmal his grades are. I don't know if it's faking to spite his parents, or it was to hide his talent from the Council, but I saw his notes, and I'll tell you that he knows a lot. A lot more than we can find out from our various sources. If I'm not wrong, Hades actually coaches his son privately, which means that with the notes that Nico has, we could get really, really far. Adding to that, the boy we have now had been thrown into a world with an entirely new world of science, and the fact that everything he learnt is from notes made by the Nico from our world or from the books left lying around. It's amazing that he's not only not been failing spectacularly, his grasp on the concepts is at least as good as mine, if not better. He's a fast learner, we wouldn't be held back. We could use the extra help."

Nico had forgotten entirely about the fact that he had spent a lot of time doodling xkcd comics he could remember in the notebooks, as well as making his own notes about the differences between the two worlds' sciences. There was one notebook, though, that he sincerely hoped Jason had not touched. He knew, when he wrote those things down, that they probably should have stayed within his head. They weren't made to be read by anyone other than him.

Silently, he also wondered if the homework session was really only a recruitment interview, or if Jason actually needed help with his work. He had always thought of Jason as a really nice but hopelessly unassuming guy, who was reasonably clueless beyond the scope of interest he had, but he was starting to re-evaluate his opinion of Jason. Perhaps this Jason was different, or it could just be that he had clung on to what he believed about Jason and how he should be, missing out on the obvious and only noticing now that it was impossible not to notice.

Seeing that they were still not entirely sold on the idea, he gave them yet another speech. "We formed this group to help people in the first place, didn't we? Especially the people the Council deems unimportant. Wouldn't we be going against our first rule of helping innocents and victims if we didn't help him just because he replaced someone we were not on friendly terms with? He's not the person we had known. The least we could do is to give him a chance to prove that he can be trusted."

"Can I see that notebook?" Annabeth asked.

Jason procured it, and Nico realized that Jason must have anticipated the request. He had not seen Jason take it, though.

As she was looking through it, Leo looked over her shoulders. Hazel and Rachel followed suite.

"If he can't be trusted?"

Of course Reyna was the one to ask that question.

"Give him the benefit of the doubt, Reyna, please? Even if you don't trust him, you trust my judgment, right? I'm not always wrong, you know. I'll vouch for him." Nico was not entirely sure what that meant, however, whatever it was, it means a lot to Reyna.

She gave a resigned sigh, and pointed out, "You're not always wrong, Jason, but if you are wrong, you'll be bringing all of us down with you."

Nico could tell from the tone that she had already given in to his request, accepting that Jason was going to be stubborn about this.

He still appreciated Leo standing up for him. "Give him a chance, Reyna. At least half of the stuff in here is not only legitimate, I'm pretty sure it's so classified that if the Council knew we had access to it, they would hunt us down and kill us."

"Fine," Reyna conceded finally.

Leo waggled his eyebrows Jason. "I'm starting to reassess your taste, Grace, the di Angelo couple clearly had been educating their kids well, tell me when you stop being interested in the girl, I want her too."

There was reluctance as she welcomed Nico into their community, though. She then proceeded to conscript the rest to help her in planning a robbery. Or something like that. Whether it was on purpose or not, she left Leo out of it, so, naturally, Jason left Nico with Leo after telling him that he should not offend anyone here, and that if anyone asked, they never met, so Nico cannot be friendly with them in public.

After he was gone, Leo and Nico stood there for a while in an awkward silence.

Leo started the conversation. "How well do…how are we like in your world?"

"We're friends." Catching Leo's look, Nico elaborated. "Pretty good friends. I know your father has a huge family out there that does not involve you and your mother. And your best friend when you were younger was Festus the Happy Dragon. It got you teased mercilessly by almost everyone. Not sure if it applies in this world, though."

"It's mostly true. Do you have more?"

Nico blinked at him. "More facts about your life? Really?"

Leo nodded.

"Well, the first girl you had a crush on was Jason's sister, Thalia Grace, but I haven't seen her around in this world, so I'm not too sure if you know her. The first girl you got the courage to ask out was Khione, and she dumped her iced drink on you in front of the cafeteria for that. In front of the whole level. Then there's Calypso, the first girl you actually dated, and she eventually left you because she disagreed with your choice of friends. Which is me, Jason, Rachel, Reyna. Hazel, too, because she's my half-sister back home."

Leo snorted out a laugh. "You sound like an obsessed stalker who is way too interested in my love life. Which, by the way, is non-existent in this world."

Nico glared at him.

"You were the one who filled me in on every little aspect of your life. I did not ask to hear about your escapades with Calypso in the locker room, or the…"

"Alright, alright, I get it, don't continue, I really don't want to know the details either, do you know how weird this is? Angel – can I call you Angel? – did we have nicknames?"

"Nicknames."

"Yeah, usually we have nicknames. I mean, Jason's called blondie here, but it's mostly since we barely know each other and Annabeth is already known as wise girl, but, yeah. So?"

"Jason's Captain America. It's a comic series that got turned into a movie. It's about WWII, which is a war between the Axis and the Allies. And, of course, you don't get the reference, but it's alright. Reyna's always been…well, Reyna. It's Reyna, you know? Rachel was red. Rachel Elizabeth Dare."

"That's her full name?! I'm so going to tease the hell out of her, do you know that she always only use the initial for her middle name? Elizabeth, who even names their children that anymore?"

"Her father does. Frank's Teddy. He looks like a giant teddy bear, please do not tell me you've never thought that."

Leo stared at him. "He was okay with that name?"

"That's what Hazel calls him. They're a couple, right?"

"They're a couple?" Leo glanced over at the closed door, behind which the group was discussing whatever it was they were talking about. A giant grin split his face. "Oh my gods, I'm so going to win that bet!" Leo looked back at Nico. "What's mine?"

"Yours- oh, you're da Vinci."

"What?"

"You tried to replicate all of Leonardo Da Vinci's work. Do you understand now?"

Leo groaned. "Really? Why would I do that? That old dude was so wrong about… wait, is he right about science in your world?"

"He was important. He also has this painting, Mona Lisa. Do you have that here?" At Leo's face, he answered the question himself. "I'll assume the answer's no then."

"Mona Lisa? Who is even called that?"

"No idea. No one knows, really, and Leonardo did die pretty long ago."

They sank back into a silence, before Leo suddenly started speaking again. "It's not easy for you here, is it? Especially since this world is mirrored, so most of the things are too similar, just not identical, and it's difficult for you to remember sometimes, isn't it? Since I'm your friend back home, I'll make an effort to be your friend here, too. Make it easier, you know? And I don't know about your friend back home, but if it was me, I would want for you to know that you can count on me not to let you down no matter which universe I belong to, so I'm not going to be your enemy. Just so you know."

Nico let out a startled laugh. Leo paused, looking at him quizzically, as if he did not realize Nico could laugh. It reminded Nico so much of the expression Leo puts on every single time Nico finally cracks and laughs at his jokes with him that he felt a pang in his chest, missing Leo more than ever, even though he was just there, in front of him.

"I – It's just, you're really like him, Leo back home, I mean, but he's always joking, to the point I kind of forget, sometimes, that he's capable of being deep and serious about things. And yes, he's a really loyal person, he never gives up on anyone, ever. I used to tell him to stay away from me, but he refused to leave, and just annoyed his way into my life and annoyed me into letting him stay around, and you – I mean, Leo, from back home, used to call me Angel when you wanted to annoy me or be particularly irritating," Nico explained.

They stared at each other for a while before Nico decided that he had enough of these topics, and got on to the diagrams and notes made in the notebook. They left this topic quickly enough after the head start, diving into the theoretical world both were more comfortable with.

Leo had enthusiastically analysed everything that was present, explaining them to Nico page by page starting from the first page after Nico admitted that he was actually finding it hard to accept the logic of this world. The differences in their sciences was quite jarring at times and hard to discern other times, making it hard for him to make no mistakes when trying to do the homework. He also admitted that he actually did not fully understand what was written in the notebook, as the things there sometimes made Nico more confused than anything else.

It soon became an exchange of information of sorts – for every question Nico asked about this world's science, Leo would ask questions of his own in turn, trying to figure out what happened in Nico's reality. He found the idea of the internet fascinating, the same way he did not quite believe that smartphones were truly possible. What they both agreed on, however, was that it was weird – rocket science here was light years ahead of that of Nico's own world, and the emphasis on space-time science and finance was so much more than that of Nico's reality, yet the technology and everyday creature comforts of Nico's old reality was way, way ahead of that in this world.

Leo theorized that it was likely because their priority was different – in Nico's reality, they wanted to breakthrough, discover new things and test limits of different fields, causing them to be better-rounded in general, expanding out in everything they could possibly explore, but slower in terms of progress made. Here, though, due to the aliens and the resource constraints, everything was focused in a few fields, making advances in leaps and bounds, while everything else was mostly ignored, as they were largely considered unimportant. After all, if you're not alive, you won't be able to enjoy the everyday things around you, or try to make more progress.

Nico completely agree.

Sometime into their discussion, however, Percy interrupted them, indicating that he wanted to talk to Nico. Nico hesitated, before deciding that nothing bad could come of it. He did give Leo a wilting look for winking at him when Percy had left the room, knowing that Leo's mind had retreated from the light and was residing in the gutter at this point of time.

Percy led him to the room that most likely belonged to the person whose family stays here, in this gigantic house. On his first look at the room, he knew instantly that this was Rachel's room, and that she most likely spends most of her time in here, if she was not over at someone else's place.

The walls were painted with colours, splashes of it that here and there that should have looked completely out of place. Instead, they added to the room, highlighting the background and making this room look less…sterile. There were other personal touches – a little sitting room slash library set up underneath the loft bed that takes up half of the gigantic, spacious room, a half-done canvas of abstract art, mostly completed clay sculptures and one stained display case filled with completed works that she must have submitted for competitions.

He stepped into the room before Percy did, trying to find his footing in this eerily similar, yet slightly different, room that belonged to someone who used to be his best friend.

Percy closed the door behind him, and Nico turned around to face him.

That was when it sunk in that they were alone.

That Percy was the only other person in this room, aside from him.


	10. Truths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was only supposed to be just one day in someone else's life, to see what the world could have been like if things had only been the slightest bit different.  
> When the time was 3:59 and he couldn't get back, though, Nico started to realise just how much can go wrong when you climb through the looking glass without looking to make sure that this was a two-way passageway first.

'Thoughts'  
"Speech"  
Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories

* * *

**Truths**

Now that it was just the two of them, Percy hovered a little. "I…"

He seemed hesitant to speak, especially since all of Nico's attention was focused on him now. For a moment, Nico wondered if Percy was trying to figure out how to ask him if this was the reason why he was mostly distracted for the past three weeks.

They stood there for a long while. Almost certain that his attention was making Percy feel too pressured to talk, Nico wandered off to the bookshelf under the bed to check if Rachel's doppelganger had the same taste in books as Rachel. You would be surprised by how much you could figure out about a person from their choice of books and reading materials. Percy must have thought that he was bored, though, as Nico could hear him take a breath to steel himself.

"I was paid to date you," he blurted out.

It certainly stopped Nico in his tracks. Out of everything he might have thought that Percy to want to talk to him about, that was one thing he had most definitely  _not_  expected.

He spun around, unsure if he had heard correctly.

Thankfully for Nico, Percy understood that he wanted an elaboration, or, at least, a confirmation. Unfortunately for Nico, however, Percy was nervous. Therefore, he lumped all his words together into one long, breathless speech, with only a few gasps in between.

"Uh, well, awhile back someone approached me." Percy paused there. Nico really did not like the direction this was heading in. "I don't really know who he is, still don't, but he told me that I had to date you, uh, you from this world, not you, since, you know, I didn't know you beforehand, well, duh, but, yeah. I asked some questions, like, why and all that, but he never gave me answers, and, well, I think he wanted me to keep an eye on you and keep your attention off something else, I'm not sure what, I haven't ever asked because you're safer without me knowing, and if I don't know I can't tell him, plausibility deniability or something like that, you were getting close to something I think. He knew that I needed that money badly and there was nowhere for me to turn to without revealing that I know all this people I'm supposed to be strangers with, some of us are not even acquaintances in our daily lives. I really have to help mom so I'm really truly sorry if you ever thought that this might have meant something and I know it does not mean anything but I don't think I can back out now. You can back out, if you really want to, the option is yours."

Percy took a deep breath after he finished his verbal vomit, making up for the lack of air. Nico took the time to process everything, mentally dividing the speech up into individual words so that it would form a coherent sentence in his head. He sorted out the information and revisited it, sure that he must have heard it wrong. Then, he decided that it might have made sense. What it implied, though, was something he did not want to think about.

Nico was suddenly reminded, rather forcibly, of how nice Percy was to him. He had to be paid to do that? That was just… Nico was really starting to feel for his doppelganger. Just what was going on? And, gods, for Nico, it was alright, this was temporary, it will last until he could get back, but for his double… It was one thing to find out that your boyfriend was cheating on you, it was another thing entirely to find out that your boyfriend was paid to even ask you out in the first place. Finding out that Percy was cheating on him had hurt, a lot, so when his doppelganger finds out about this little detail… If his double had been even half as in love with Percy as he was, then this would not end well for him. It wouldn't.

"You shouldn't be apologizing to me," was the first sentence out of his mouth. It tasted acrid, heavy and wrong. He shouldn't need to be saying this.

Then again, he shouldn't be doing a lot of things.

Percy hung his head a little. "I know." He replied shortly.

Nico replayed Percy's giant chunk of verbal vomit once more. This time, though, he picked out how Percy had slowed down slightly when talking about his mother. That was a sore spot, then. He knew that he was mean, to press when Percy was clearly unwilling to elaborate, but he figured that Percy probably owed him for hurting his feelings, even if it was unintentional. And, Percy definitely owed it to his double.

"What happened to Miss Sally?"

Percy seemed ready to ask Nico why he knew his mother's name, before deciding that it probably was not supposed to be surprising.

"She's sick. The hospital wants the payment, but I can't get enough to keep her in there, or pay for her medicine."

Nico thought about it. He had learnt from Leo earlier on that the Demigods were founded when Piper learnt from her father that there was enough time for everyone to live longer, so there was actually no real need to keep decreasing life span of the 'poor'. Therefore, everything they did was to help the less fortunate by giving them the time stolen from the 'rich'.

"Why didn't you take some of the time the Demigods take?"

Even as he asked the question, he knew the answer, but he could not take back what he had said. Percy looked hurt, as if he did not think that Nico would believe he could stoop that low, but he answered anyway.

"The time we take is for the less fortunate and for those who need it. Besides, if we kept it for ourselves, the Council will get suspicious, and we'll have to deal with TimeKeepers. They would target everyone who might have been close to us, and we refuse to get innocents involved in this."

Nico could understand that. He could also understand why Percy did what he did. Knowing that there was no need to drag this on, Nico said, "I forgive you for this, but I will not speak for Nico, the other one, the one who was here before I was. I'll keep this up for his sake, and for Bianca's sake, but you'll explain to him –"

It was around this time that Leo burst into the room, excitedly waving the notebook around, declaring, "Nico, I love you, I would marry you if you could get me the code to the notes in this notebook, I think that we just found out how to undo the counter!"

Both Nico and Percy swivelled around to stare at him, in unison.

Leo froze on the spot, going a little wide-eyed. "I'm not interrupting anything, am I? I am, aren't I? I'll just excuse myself now…"

He edged back towards the door, clearly ready to bolt for it.

"Leo, wait," Nico called, recovering from the slight shock of a stranger just barging into a conversation. "It's alright, what were you saying?"

Leo stopped at the door, one hand still on the doorknob. He waited a little, as if for an actual indication that he really had not interrupted anything, before speaking.

"Well, it's just that, look here?" Leo opened up the notebook and pointed at a diagram with scribbles all around it, and a list of something that looks like 'steps' for something, before continuing, seeing that neither Nico nor Percy understood what he was saying. "This is like the original notes, the stuff explaining how the time counter originally works, and how time transference was possible in the first place, and if I'm not wrong, there are notes on how the distribution of time had originally been. I'm also pretty sure that all this is the steps to undoing the whole counter, to make sure that it doesn't limit the number of years a person would live, so we would live like normal humans used to live before the invention of time counters and the people who made time a currency."

He paused, then continued, apparently deciding that Nico and Percy could use having more information unloaded on them. "It's kind of different from the NightWatch and Artemis' Hunters, as they freeze the counter instead of undoing it, but ultimately, it's also a way to cheat the system. If we could just decipher what is written on this, we could undo the counter for all of us here."

Here, he looked at Nico hopefully. "You can go and find the code breaker, right? It must be somewhere around in your room."

Nico looked at him. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask about the two groups Leo had mentioned, when, unbidden, he recalled one time in one of his dreams, when he and Bianca were alone, before Percy had asked his dream-self out. Bianca had been done with her lunch, and was walking off when Nico had asked her to stay, and asked her about where she left the notes their father had left lying around somewhere.

She had stiffened up a bit, before telling him to go and get their father and ask him himself. Nico had remembered feeling that something must have gone wrong then, when he woke up, because that was the first time there was even an indication as to how Bianca and he actually interacted.

Of course, he had no proof that what occurred in his dreams were reality here, but it might have been a subconscious indication, right? He had mentioned something about his father's notes after all, hadn't he? Maybe the code was written by his father? That would mean that he would have to track down his father.

Thinking over it now, he suddenly realised that his father was never around.

Mother cooked for them, drove them to school, drove them back home, gave them pocket money, took them out occasionally, but Nico had never seen his father around.

Hades would never win the award for being the best father ever, even back in his reality, but he was never that distant. Sure, he was cold towards Nico, but he had always been caring when Bianca was around, although Nico suspected that he had never quite figured out how to show his care. It made no sense that he was not around, here, in this world, especially since both Bianca and his mother, Maria, were around.

It's been almost three weeks, and Nico had not even heard him being mentioned, let alone actually seen him. From his memories of the dreams, he could not recall an instance in which he had talked to Bianca about their father, except for that one time.

It was then that he noticed that Leo and Percy had been trying to get his attention. Leo, in fact, had been making silly faces while Percy continuously waved his hand around in front of Nico. They both looked a little concerned, before the relief washed over their features when they realised that they had captured his attention.

"Finally!" Leo cried, throwing his hands up, acting like a drama queen. "You really know how to zone out, you know."

Nico could feel his face heating up.

Percy came to the rescue, asking him what it was that had kept his head so obviously a thousand miles away.

"If I'm not wrong, my doppelganger don't have the code, Leo," Nico started. Leo looked so crestfallen that he hurried his next words, causing them to tumble out one after the other.

"Hades does."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this was a short chapter! I'm not promising that things will get clearer. Just, you know. The story will pick up soon. Probably. I suck at writing a packed story, I notice. Also, I've come to peace with the fact that my schedule for updating won't be that regular anymore. Should still be ~1 chapter per week, but well, still working on the sequel, too. For those of you that checks out my other stories, I'm re-hauling the first fanfiction I've written, which is a WIP as of now, and I've finally got inspiration! Yay! I'll be renaming it, I think.  
> Come and talk to me on tumblr, still iCarly1969 there.


	11. Hades

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was only supposed to be just one day in someone else's life, to see what the world could have been like if things had only been the slightest bit different.  
> When the time was 3:59 and he couldn't get back, though, Nico started to realise just how much can go wrong when you climb through the looking glass without looking to make sure that this was a two-way passageway first.

'Thoughts'  
"Speech"  
Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories

* * *

**Hades**

“What were you doing with Jason?” Bianca demanded suspiciously. Nico brushed past her and deposited his bag on the sofa before replying.

“He dropped by earlier to sort some things out, and we went to the library.”

“Sort what out?”

“Homework,” Nico managed pretty evenly as he turned to face her. The suspicion was still there, but she let the topic go, leaving him for the comfort of the bedroom. Nico scrubbed his hand over his face, thankful that Bianca had not noticed that Nico had borrowed Jason’s bag to store his new notes, as well as his notebooks in.

He then proceeded to basically tear apart the living room looking for the code breaker. Nico did not like seeing Leo disappointed. He conceded defeat, though, when he had gone through literally everything in every single room other than his and Bianca’s bedroom, and still came up with nothing. Oh well. At least he got the whole place clean while he was at it.

His eyes slid back to the bag. How was he supposed to return it to Jason? Back at the meeting, before being dismissed, Reyna had made it excruciatingly clear that everything that had happened within the walls stays confined within the house, including any form of friendship or alliances. Outside of their meetings, nothing had actually happened here, so they were all strangers. Including him and Jason. ‘I’ll just hold onto it until the next meeting,’ Nico thought.

The two of them were eating reheated leftovers at the dining table when Nico asked casually, “Where’s father?”

Bianca, who had not been paying much attention to him earlier, looked up, as if she could not believe he had just asked that question. “Don’t you remember? They’ve taken him to the 3rd Institute in Delphi, the one set aside specifically for people that had contributed to the founding and running of the Colonies.”

“3rd Institute?” Nico questioned, even as he tried to recall. He knew, from his extensive research on the history of this place, that Delphi was well known for being the colony that produces insane people who believe they were prophetic. He also knew that many insane, or criminally insane, tends to be sent to Delphi for correctional measures. Does that mean that…?

“You were there when they took him, Nico, you even helped to testify, and you never once regretted doing it. Don’t pretend you don’t know anything, you know that you are the main reason they could lock him up in the first place.”

The glare she gave him froze him to the spot. It was filled with blame and hatred he had never imagined Bianca would direct at him. Much like the ones from Reyna, Rachel, even Hazel, that he had never imagined being on the receiving end of. “I’m not hungry anymore,” she declared, pushing her food away and standing up, leaving the room.

Her revelation left Nico scrambling to rewrite his judgement of his doppelganger. The hatred was suddenly starting to make sense. It appalled him just to even think that someone, anyone, would believe that he could ever do such a thing, especially to his family. His father. To think that an alternate version of him could do this without remorse or regret… Nico could suddenly see why Bianca would hate him.

If it were him, he would hate himself, too.

It didn’t make sense, though. From what he picked up, from Jason’s recounts and the stuff jotted down in margins of the notebooks and textbooks, the other him was not this person Bianca was painting him out to be.

Besides, if Hades had the key and the codes, before making sure that his son (Nico wasn’t sure about Bianca) was made privy to the fact that the time counters could be reversed when it was clear that the rest of the population was kept in the dark, then why would Nico send him into a mental institute? Never mind that he would never do such a thing? Unless his doppelganger wanted to keep him out of the way, but if that was the case, then what was he trying to do that he did not want his father to know about?

All that aside, this threw a wrench into his plans. He needed to talk to doppelganger Hades. He cannot do that if this person was in another colony entirely. Thinking through his options, he figured that the easiest path would be to find a reason to visit his ‘father’, then somehow travel to Delphi Colony and talk to Hades. It would be just like travelling overseas back home, wasn’t it? Get a ticket, show your passport and fill in some forms, then you’re set to go?

* * *

 

As it turns out, things were a lot more difficult here. Firstly, they needed a very explicit and detailed reason as to why he would suddenly feel compelled to visit a man three colonies away. Secondly, their identification was apparently their counter. Which, unfortunately, Nico did not have. On top of that, he needed the counter to pay for a ticket – a temporary pass to the underground tunnel that was part of the network connecting the colonies.

He was not too sure if it should be suspicious or not that they were satisfied his half-assed answer about how he wanted to see if his father was doing well, especially since he had not visited his father ever since he was sent to the asylum. He had taken a look at some of the other reasons, his was nothing comparable. Why would they accept it, then?

There was no reason to dwell on it, though. He had gotten his access, especially since Maria accepted his reasons for needing currency to travel, sending him a reply letter telling him about how proud she was that he was starting to learn to be concerned about his father. She had attached something that stored time, according to Leo. Apparently, it could be directly used for payment, so Nico could just pay with it and get by without revealing that he had no time counters.

Before he left, Leo had detained him and gave him a watch.

“It looks like one of those Rolex watches sold back home,” Nico had pointed out.

“Obviously. It’s based off something doodled in that book. I think,” Leo told him. He then proceeded to explain that the watch contained a recorder and a tracker, so they would be able to listen to the whole conversation afterwards, as an added safety precaution.

He stressed that it was Reyna and Rachel that remained suspicious. Nico reassured him that he could understand why they did not trust him. Leo then told him that the watch is activated from the moment Nico put it on, and it only deactivates when Leo helps him take it off.

Nico only understood what Leo meant when he discovered that the straps interlock with each other, making it near impossible to remove on his own without a specific set of tools.

Talking to Bianca about why he was suddenly interested to go to Delphi was the real challenge, as, from what he could piece together, his doppelganger was exceedingly eager to go on with life pretending that their father had never been around. She had been sceptical when Nico told her that he wanted to apologise to their father, and see how well he was doing, but she had accepted it. It helped that Nico had confronted her during a lunch break, and they knew that both Jason and Percy were waiting for them to get back to lunch.

Nico was proud to realise that all this was settled within four days.

By the time Friday afternoon rolled around, he was ready to go.

Standing at the terminal, with a backpack and the access pass, he waited only for a few minutes before a harried looking person hurried over.

“Are you Nico Di Angelo?” he asked, sounding a little out of breath.

“Yes,” Nico replied.

He was directed to a small room with a few benches, and told to wait there.

Settling down on a spot next to the only window in this room, he started people-watching. For a Saturday morning, there was a surprising amount of people apparently hurrying to and from work.

When they came to collect him, he noted, with a small amount of alarm, that the person they introduced to him as the one who would get him there was wearing track pants and a t-shirt. For a moment, he wondered if they would have to walk all the way there, through the tunnels.

It turns out that walking through the tunnel was not necessary. Instead, they had a small cart that would take them down the tracks. He was promised that they would arrive in three hours, tops.

The ride there was silent, as neither he nor the driver felt like talking. Instead, Nico stared at the dust-packed tunnel that kept them from aboveground, the layer keeping him from seeing the sky. There were some things, symbols and the likes, carved onto the walls of the tunnels. They zoomed by too fast for him to truly register anything other than a big blur, though. The wind blowing against him had him sinking down into his seat after a while, though, and he spent the last half an hour or so zoning out.

He then spaced out for the entire ride to the 3rd Institute. When he was asked to alight, he got off, with the backpack of travel items, and stood there, watching the car drive off. He then turned, looking up at the building.

It was white. He could count five floors, provided that they did not have basements. Everything was neatly spaced out, a sharp contrast from what he could recall having seen on his semi-tour of the Delphi Colony.

Most of the buildings they passed by were odd, quirky and usually quite literally out of shape. They had a personality, and they reminded Nico of the fairy tale cities, or even the Disney towns. This building… if it had a personality, it would be OCD, perfectionist plus stick-up-the-ass. Like him, in a sense.

Inside, everything was polished until it was sparkling. The air itself smelt sterile, and the receptionist at the counter had teeth that reflected the light.

She smiled at him politely, then checked her book when he said that he was here to talk to Hades. She checked her book, before advising him to be careful as the patient was volatile, and could be dangerous. She told Nico that as a safety precaution, Dr. Norman, Hades’ psychiatrist, would be accompanying him in the room. Then, she pointed him in the direction of the elevators, telling him sweetly that he should go to room Harmony, located on the 3rd floor, down the left corridor, as the doctor was already there.

As he walked down the corridors, he looked at the plaques hanging outside the doors to each room, and silently wondered if there was something wrong with the heads of every single person in authority in this world. Then he wondered if it was just the asylum that was wrong.

What sort of asylums had rooms named after abstract, peaceful things and concepts like Melody, Harmony, Peace, Love, Home and Friendship? Really? What on earth were the people who made this place thinking? Oh, they sound like they would create a calming environment, to help the people here quieten down, reflect on their lives and improve their mental health.

Well, Nico was not certifiable crazy, and the room names drove him up the wall, as opposed to their intended effect. He wondered if the purpose of this place was to drive the people here to insanity, through sheer ‘cheerfulness’ and ‘happiness’, by people trying to ‘help’ them.

Finally, he was outside of room Harmony.

It looked as white as the rest of the place does.

Taking a deep breathe, he pushed the door open slowly.

His first impression of the room was that it was so _cheerful_. It was painted with the colours of the rainbow, with staves drawn around the room on the wall, musical notes floating all around the place. It was bright, too, with a balcony window that was locked with a big padlock. He realised, then, that it was probably on the other side of the building, for from here, the view was of the fields. There were a few cows grazing. Somewhere on the far side of the fields, there were horses roaming around.

All that went out of focus, though, when he saw the person sitting on the bed. Automatically, his eyes were drawn to the person’s left arm, where the timer was meant to be. Immediately, he forced himself to follow that line of vision and look down, as if it was his intentions, right from the start, to bow in respect and apology. The brief glance, however, told him more than enough about the identity of the ‘patient’.

He turned around to greet his visitor.

Nico could see the exact moment his father recognised him. It was there, in the brief surprise and shock flitting across in his eyes, one that vanished in the next instant, but it was enough to let Nico know that yes, this was his father. His father, the one who had raised him, from his own reality, who had likely traded place with mirror-Hades.

Neither of them reacted, outwardly, not showing any signs that anything might be off about the other. Hades returned to staring at Nico blankly, the brief signs of recognition gone. Realising that he had to play along, too, he asked, hesitantly, “Dad?”

As if he knew that his father could not recognise him, but wanted to try anyway. It disgusted him, how easy it was for him to slip into the character of a regretful, unfilial son who was finally slightly concerned about how his father is doing.

Sometimes, he hated how well he could act.

The doctor, sitting next to Hades, smiled at him sympathetically, as if she empathises with him. He wanted to snarl at her, but he restrained himself from doing that. The fact that she was doing this meant that the people who had put his father here did not know that Hades was not the one they were looking for, neither did they know that he was not quite who they thought he was, either, meaning that in the eventuality that he needed to fight them, his father and he would still have the upper hand, the element of surprise.

His father opened his mouth. The words came out in a raspy voice, as if he had not spoken for quite a long time, causing him to almost forget how to form words.

“N-i-co?” It came out uncertainly, as if Hades was not quite sure who he was, either. There was a hint of surprise in there, too, just for their audience.

It served to remind Nico of just who he had gotten his skills from.

“Father!” he cried, sounding relieved. Striding up, he bent over slightly in respect, and took Hades’ hand. The wince and concern was real when he realised just how thin his father really was, how his hand was really just a skeleton with skin.

“How are you doing?”

From the way things were going, it was more than likely that his father truly was incapable of holding a conversation. He forced himself to look hopeful, regardless, as if he expected a response, or at least, wished for one.

When Hades did not show the slightest hint of having caught that, Nico looked a little disappointed. It helped that the disappointment was partially real, he had expected something, anything.

He knew that they expected more from him, too, so he continued talking. About Bianca, about his mother, about life, in general, and he apologised for not visiting sooner, for leaving him here alone. He kept it up until finally, he seemed to run out of things to say. The doctor smiled, nodding at him, as if he had done something right when Hades finally reacted.

He gestured for Nico to come closer with his hands, which were shaking with the overdose of drugs they had kept him on. Nico allowed himself to brighten up a little.

He approached his father, as if he believed that if he closed the physical distance between them, bringing himself closer, his father would hear him, and would reply.

When he was close, however, the doctor stopped him gently.

“Don’t touch him suddenly, he startles easily.”

She sounded like she was concerned for his safety, like she cared about him. Her voice was honeyed, a diabetes-inducing level of sweetness laced with sugar. The mere thought that this was the person ‘treating’ his father made his skin crawl, made him a little sick. He did not want this woman anywhere near his father, or any member of his family.

Instead of letting his thoughts show, however, he smiled at her, as if grateful for her thoughtfulness. He thanked her for it, and was a lot more cautious when he put his arms around his father, as if he was afraid that Hades would break if handled wrongly. In a way, he was afraid, but it was more that he would not be able to continue maintaining this façade.

Leaning in, he whispered words of comfort into his father’s ear, silently.

At least, that’s how it would appear to an outsider.

In truth, he had whispered, “Is the code with you?”

Then, he let go, stepping back a little, to give him a little space. Time for Hades to decide his next move and execute it.

Hades’ breath simply hitched a little, and he remained a little out of sorts, as if he was out of touch with reality, and had not quite caught it.

Slowly, however, he turned around, his eyes apparently tracking Nico. Shakily, unsteadily, he reached out for Nico, silently asking for something. Possibly no one else would understand what he was truly asking for. 

Nico looked at the outstretched palm hesitantly, as if uncertain what he should do, and looked to the doctor. He made sure he looked pleading, like he was asking for advice on how he should respond. It would not do for them to suspect that he was dealing with this too easily – he had, after all, supposedly put his father here with them, thinking that he was mad.

For appearance’s sake, he had to put on a really convincing show.

It was not too hard. Especially since he had no idea what Hades wanted, either.

Noticing his hesitance, Hades gestured at his throat. Nico stared at him for a while, before coming to a realisation.

Unbuttoning his collar, he reached in and removed the small light bulb, threaded onto a necklace he took off. He looked at it for a while, before dropping it onto Hades’ hand, briefly covering it, blocking it from view.

His father cradled the necklace gently, as if it was the most precious thing he ever had, with both hands, bringing it closer to his chest. After a long, long while, he finally started speaking. It was raspy, unused, but it was his voice, and it was definitely his father, for no one else would say this.

“You’re mother… brilliant, wonder…love…our world, our home...gift, treasure it…”

Fixated on the necklace, he fiddled with it for a while before cupping it in both hands, relying completely on the pillows and the headboard to keep him upright. Minutes later, he held out his hands. Nico moved forward to collect it to make things easier for Hades - it was obvious he could not sit up on his own.

Of course, it was to shorten the amount of time the doctor could see whatever was in his hand, too.

Hades tipped his head back slightly, closing his eyes, looking exhausted. Nico stood there in silence, ensuring that he, too, looked suitably emotionally worn out.

He had lost track of the amount of time he had stood there in silence, trying to figure out where to go from now, when the doctor stood up. “You did well, honey,” she praised, pride colouring her voice. Nico looked at her, surprised, and she continued, “To be able to face your father after all the guilt that must have consumed you, you are quite something, indeed. Your courage is something to be admired.”

She smiled at him, before striding to the door, opening it.

Nico could not remember having closed it, but it was obvious that she wanted him to leave. On an impulse, he asked, “How much longer would he need to spend here?”

The smile on her face did not even waver.

“I am sure that you are aware that this is the best all the colonies have to offer, and we are trying our best. It seems that your visit helps the most, though, as this is the most response we have seen from him that is not negative. It would help for you to continue visiting, I am sure we could cure him much faster with your assistance.”

Nico wanted to point out that there was nothing wrong with him in the first place, that they were, in actuality, only making things worse, but he was well aware of the fact that they definitely already know that. He also knew that Nico Di Angelo, son of Hades, did not know anything. Was not supposed to know that his father was alright, that this was just a scheme by the Council, to keep Hades locked up, for some reason.

A reason he would find out when he got the object back to Leo.

For, when Hades returned the necklace, Nico could feel the little square of something tucked in with the light bulb. Whatever it was, it had something to do with the code, or it was something the other Hades had left his father with. Sleight of hand for the win.

So, he thanked them profusely for helping, asking them about what they were actually doing to help him, so he would be more aware from now on.

It disgusted him, the ease with which he could go along with this charade, smiling and nodding whilst the doctor continued speaking – talking about the drugs they kept Hades on, the therapy sessions in private and the group sessions, as well as the schedules and how they hoped it would help him adjust.

He knew that they were omitting at least as much as they were telling him, but he did not point that out. Instead, he promised to come back to visit his father once more within the next month or so, if his mother permits, and bring both his sister and his mother along if possible.

He already knew, however, that he would not do that.

If he were to come back here, it would be to get his father out of this hellhole, get him somewhere safe, and start reversing this ‘treatment’.

For the time being, however, they had to believe that he thought his father had gone crazy, that they were helping him recover. He would have to help keep his father here, if only to keep Bianca, his mother and himself out of here.

It was a truly despicable thing to do, and, for the first time in his life, he despised the ease with which he could be someone else.

He did not want to do this. That was his father, someone who lived life with his head held high, who never bowed down to anyone who did not deserve it. His father was not someone whose will breaks so easily that he would go insane in a few days, and he definitely would not have wanted to be ‘treated’ if he were truly gone.

For this world, though.

He’ll do this, just like his father must have chosen to, seven months ago.

For that must be the amount of time he had already spent here, given that the first time Nico had noticed that there was something off about his father was the day after the first night he started dreaming of the Other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not entirely sure how this chapter would do. Leave a comment, won't you? It would be highly appreciated!  
> Oh, and come chat with me at on tumblr under the same username!


	12. Secrets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was only supposed to be just one day in someone else's life, to see what the world could have been like if things had only been the slightest bit different.  
> When the time was 3:59 and he couldn't get back, though, Nico started to realise just how much can go wrong when you climb through the looking glass without looking to make sure that this was a two-way passageway first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got stuck, since the story logic doesn't really make sense anymore. Editing is just as hard as writing this thing, it appears, and from now on, I'll be basically rewriting the whole stuff as I go along. This chapter is officially three chapters late, I apologize for that. Update speed will be around this from now on, though. Thanks for everyone who is still reading this! Leave a comment when you're done, please?

'Thoughts'  
"Speech"  
_Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories_

* * *

**Secrets**

Nico kept the necklace clasped in his hands. He only uncovered it after Leo had taken off the watch, the 'insurance'. As the two of them sat there staring at the lightbulb, Nico wondered just what was he expected to see. The only thing present, aside from the chain, was the light bulb.

'The lightbulb is what we're looking for?" Leo asked, a little disbelieving. "How the hell is it supposed to help us decode anything?!"

Nico privately agreed with Leo. This lightbulb was completely… well. It was not going to be helpful, that was for sure. As he stared at it, though, he wondered just what was it about the lightbulb that made it seem off.

Leo was ranting in the background about going to all the troubles to get a visit to Hades only to turn up with nothing when Nico realised that the bottom part of the lightbulb was thicker. He picked the lightbulb up once more, pulling at the bottom.

Pausing, Leo watched him curiously. The part he was tugging at fell off without any resistance. A single silver rod fell off, landing on his palm. Nico stared at that. He turned his stare onto Leo when he gasped.

The grin spreading across his face made Nico even more confused. How was this rod better than a lightbulb? Apparently, though, it was.

According to Leo, that thing, that rod, was a 'Booklet'. Basically, the minimised equivalent of a tablet. It was considered an experimental technology, however, and only the Creators who were working on this technology would know how to utilise them. Hades was one of those lab coats. Therefore, the logical conclusion was that this rod was, indeed, what they were looking for.

It was just as clear, though, that since even Leo had no idea how to make this thing work, there was no way anyone else could extract what they wanted from this silver stick. As far as Nico was concerned, this thing doesn't make sense.

Even the smallest thumb drive was five times larger than that… 'Booklet'. And it was supposed to hold a lot of information. How is that even possible?

Then again, different dimensions.

Before Nico could work himself into another headache over how things were even possible, Leo tapped him on the shoulder, interrupting his train of thoughts.

"It's midnight."

Nico blinked at him.

He sighed.

"We have school tomorrow, darling. School. That's not an alien concept, right? I'm not sure about you, but I'd rather not be falling asleep in lessons, since there are people coming in for lesson observations."

Nico could feel the blood leaving his face. He had completely forgotten about the fact that people from the Council, TimeKeepers and the likes, would be coming down.

Leo seemed to realise that. "Look, it's alright. We go our own ways, get enough sleep, pretend we're doing well as students, keep them satisfied that the 'system' is going on perfectly well and will not go wrong, and then we come back to figure out how to get this stubborn thing to work for us. Alright?"

"Oh… kay. Wait, we're meeting up tomorrow?"

"Right, we didn't tell you. Demigods meeting tomorrow, you'll know where to be at."

The dusty strands of moonlight illuminating the patch in front of them suddenly disappeared. Alarmed, Nico and Leo glanced up at the window instinctively, even though they knew that they could see nothing from their angle. And, if they actually saw something, someone, that other person would have seen them too. Despite that, both of them drew their legs closer and flattened more against the wall, in hopes of escaping the line of sight of whoever was on the other side of the wall.

No one ever comes to the library, except for Nico. And recently, the Demigods. A moment later, the figure obstructing the moonbeams disappeared. Neither Nico nor Leo moved from their position, though.

After a long while, they decided to just part ways and worry about this the next day. A harried 'goodbye' later, Nico was back in his room, curled up under his covers, asleep the moment his head touched the pillow.

_"_ _Nico?"_

_The concern in Hazel's voice was apparent. Nico blinked blearily at her before realising that he had been drooling over his books. Abruptly, everything focused, becoming sharper. He sat up at attention, wiping at his mouth with his right hand while he smiled sheepishly at Hazel._

_"_ _Nothing, really, just, I got this idea and I'm trying to see if it would work…" His eyes were drawn back to the books, still open, on the table._

_Chunks of words were scrawled in the margins, in between the lines, and there were illustrations to go with the text that were already there. Hazel craned her neck, trying to see what was on the book. Except…_

_"_ _What language is this in?"_

_Nico blinked at her._

_"_ _Pardon?"_

_"_ _It's not English. It's not Italian, Ancient Greek, Latin, or Japanese either. I know you were trying to pick up Hieroglyphs, but I am pretty sure that's not it. So?"_

_He let out a nervous huff. "Uh, well. It's…"_

Nico squeezed his eyes shut in frustration. Why? He was just asking for one night of blissful, uninterrupted sleep. One night. Swallowing down his groan of frustration, he shoved the bedcovers aside as he sat up. If he was not going to get anymore sleep, he might as well put his energy to more useful things.

Such as.

Ancient Greek and Latin. Some things he had picked up for fun, together with his friends. Why hadn't he thought of using them in his notes? From what he had dug up, those languages were literally extinct in this world. Even if anyone were to get his notebooks, they would not be capable of understanding anything.

Stumbling a little, he got to the table. He winced at the squeal the chair let out when he yanked it out, automatically turning to see if Bianca had heard the noise.

She had barely stirred.

Letting out a breath he had been holding, Nico sat down and yanked out his notebooks. Flipping them open, he mentally grimaced as he thought of getting some new notebooks. Before that, though. At least he had one exercise book that was reasonably clean.

He got to work, translating everything into the exercise book in a careful mix of Ancient Greek and Latin. It was tougher than he expected, since he had no dictionaries, Jason, or Reyna, to refer to now. Eventually, he started writing out the words he could not remember a translation for in Japanese.

His eyelids started drooping as he started hunching over his desk. Deciding that enough was enough, he pushed himself up, clearing away evidences of what he had been doing before flopping onto bed.

Bianca suspected nothing, as usual, when she woke him up the next morning. She did, however, point out rather crossly that if he continued waking up at this time, he was going to make both of them late at some point of time.

Nico indulged her, saying that he would wake up earlier the next morning.

School was a bore, as usual, but after a few lessons, Nico became aware of someone watching him. He could not quite figure out who it was, or exactly where the person was at, but he knew that someone was keeping an eye on him. It made him a little paranoid, but after two bumbles, he realised that he could not alert the person watching him that he knew.

He carried on as he usually did, determined not to slip up. Just. Being a little more hyperaware of his surroundings should be acceptable.

That night, they were having dinner – Bianca, him and their mother. It was a simple affair, but the soup was delicious. Bianca chattered on about her school work, as well as what had happened, while Nico was content with listening.

After dinner, Bianca retreated to their room, leaving Nico to do the dishes with Maria. His mind was a few thousand miles away, though, as he went through the motions mechanically. His mind had led him to Leo talking about the 'Booklet' being a prototype, something created, designed by a team of Creators.

A team of them.

For his father's doppelganger to get his hands on one, he must have been part of the team, or had been close to someone who was part of the team. From his experiences back home, if a couple worked in the same company, especially a research company (that's how he thought of the Creators as), they were more likely than not to end up in different departments.

Departments that were not related.

Didn't Jason say something about how Hades of this world worked on the counters? And Maria, she was supposed to be part of another team entirely. The point was, how was someone working on counters able to get a booklet, one that was still in experimental phase at that?

There was only one answer that came to his mind.

Maria.

There was a very, very high chance that she was in on the Booklet project. There was no other ways the Booklet could have ended up in other-Hades' hands, really. This meant that she would know how to operate it. Then, all that was left was to figure out how to get her to talk about it, while leaving an escape route for himself, in case she really did not know anything.

He would not be able to do anything if he ended up with his father.

That was when he made another connection.

All those articles about portals, alternate worlds, and theories on parallel dimensions… they were written by a diverse range of authors, but most of the publications kind of stopped a long while ago. There was a gigantic gap until a recent author picked up on the topic.

The author's name was Maria Levesque.

Coincidence much?

Back home, she was Hazel's mother, sure, but he had learnt from Leo and Jason that Hazel was Piper's half-sister in this world. Since Hazel Levesque was actually Hazel McLean in this world, by the records, no one named Maria Levesque existed here. So this name was an alias here. Either it was someone who had been to his version of the universe, or, to another world where Hazel was not a McLean.

Right at the start, Nico had wondered if the happenstance had resulted in more than one person who had ended up in another world. What was the chances, though, that two people from the same home in the same universe ended up in the same parallel world?

Was the mirror really just a fluke that happened to be there?

And, the block.

Could it have happened to his father, too? Tempted, by the possibility of another realm, then trapped, stranded here because of the blockage?

Back to the matter at hand, Marie Levesque. And Maria di Angelo.

He had not thought much about her, but, now, he realised that if someone were to realise there was something wrong about Hades, it would be his wife.

It wouldn't hurt, would it, to confirm?

"What's your opinion on parallel universes?"

The tension spiked, causing Nico to hold back a wince. That was not his intention, he really just wanted to clarify. Well, at least he knew now that she was aware of this whole show happening in her life.

She was staring at him, Nico knew, without having to look back over his shoulders. He also knew that she had looked away, back to her work, as if he had never said anything.

The tension drew itself out, thinning the air around them and making it a little stifling. When Maria finally spoke, she did the opposite of dispelling it. She dialled it up more.

"What about it, honey?"

She sounded indulgent, as if she had not quite understood what he was saying, but was willing to play along with it for his benefit. This set the alarm bells off in Nico's head. He could hear the clear warning there, telling him not to continue on this topic.

At the same time, it was an opening, telling him that she understood what he was getting at. It should have been a brilliant opportunity.

Now that he could actually press on, though, he found that he had no idea what to do next. When did my life become such a soap opera? Nico wondered sourly.

If only it was really a show. At least, then, he would have a script to follow, so if he could no longer improvise, he could look at the script and be reassured that as long as he followed it, roughly, he would get there, eventually.

There was the fact that there would be an ending, something that would satisfy, that had always been important. Now, though, he was not only in a drama, he was in one that had an ending decided entirely on his ability to improvise and get things right.

There was a brief flash of something in her eyes then, urging him to understand and react appropriately. She wanted to lead the conversation, but for that to happen, he had to participate.

His throat was dry.

It suddenly occurred to Nico that they could have been bugged, if the Council truly did not trust them, as said by Jason, supported by Leo and Percy, and now, as it seemed, confirmed by his mother.

If so, how long had they been bugged? And just how much did they already know? Had they already figured things out? Nico swallowed down the rising panic, forcing himself to remain calm and proceed with what he was doing as normal.

If they had not already been alerted, he certainly did not want to act abnormal and rouse suspicion. Otherwise, well. Better safe than sorry.

So, as calmly as he could, Nico dried off the dishes. "Nothing, mother. Just curiosity, since I found a couple of books on that topic last time I went to the library."

"Ah." Maria paused for a while. Then, she gestured at the remaining dishes. "Finish that up, dear, we'll continue this conversation upstairs. You can show me those books you're talking about, I'll try to enlighten you on it."

With that, she straightened up, depositing the rag she used to wipe down the table in the sink before striding out of the kitchen. Presumably, she was heading for his room. Finishing up the remaining dishes as fast as he could, Nico stuffed everything onto the racks before hurrying after her.

Maria was sitting on his bunk, staring out of the window at the rain when he entered the room. Nico was not sure when it had started to drizzle, but, as he watched her, it became clear that while she had tried to prepare for this eventuality, she had never truly came to reconcile with it. In her mind, she had probably never been able to accept that her husband was in another universe, that her son would likely have followed him there. Perhaps she knew that he might be liable to do that, but she had never accepted it.

She gave no indication that she had sensed his presence, not turning around to look at him even after he was in the room. After a moment, though, she told Nico that this room was not bugged. As juniors, the code protected them to a certain extent. The Council cannot justify spying on them, especially since neither of them had ever done anything to warrant such measures.

As she finished speaking, she leant back a little before turning around.

Maria had a killer poker face, Nico realised suddenly. No matter how expressionless she was, though, her eyes betrayed her. There was hope there, hope filtering through worry, concern and, surprisingly, despair. Finally, she asked, "Is my son safe, in your world?"

Hearing her talk to him as a stranger was a slap in the face, reminding him that she was not truly his mother, no matter what he may wish. It made him realise that he had gotten too comfortable in this world, especially since it was not his world.

Sometime in the weeks he had spent here, he had settled into a comfortable mind set and routine, setting up a new life and identity for himself, the sense of wrongness slipping away with the familiarity with Leo and Jason, as well as the lessened hostility of both Reyna and Rachel. Occasionally, they were on the same level they had been, in his world.

It brought him back to his senses, making him a few hundred times guiltier for not trying as hard as he should have, for staying here, in place of his doppelganger, who belongs here and should have been here instead.

This was not his home, his home was a universe away.

He was brought back out of his head, however, when he realised that she was still waiting for an answer.

"He would be safer there than he is, here."

She closed her eyes, the relief stark on her features for a split second.

Opening them, she looked at him straight in the eye. "What is it, then?" she asked, softly.

Nico understood what she was asking.

"Do you know about the booklets?"

This time, it was surprise, most likely because that was the last thing she had expected him to ask about, although she should truly be a lot less surprised. There was a little wariness tinging her tone when she asked, "What about it?"

After Leo had given up on trying to open the Booklet, he had given it to Nico for safekeeping, since he cannot guarantee that it would remain safe in his possession. Nico took it out of his pocket, letting her see what he had.

"Can you help me open this?"

She picked it up delicately, handling it with care, as if it was the most precious thing in the world. Cupping it in a way reminiscent of how father had held the light bulb necklace, she lifted it closer and studied it.

A wry smile appeared on her face.

"Hades' booklet, am I right?"

"Yes."

"What is it that you want from this?" Her eyes never left the little thing in her hand.

Nico hesitated, not too sure how he should phrase it. Finally, he told her the full truth, how her son had had a notebook filled with notes, but there were many things written in a code none of them could crack, which was why he went to look for Hades from this world. He included the part where he ended up finding his own father instead, so he could clarify his earlier words.

Silence chased his words. Eventually, Maria nodded once, pocketing the Booklet and standing up. "I'll retrieve everything I can from this," she promised.

Her hand was on the door when she paused.

"Go easier on yourself, Nico. There's nothing much you can do to change the way things already are."

She smiled a little when she saw the look on his face.

"Nico is my son, dear. I know him well enough, or at least, I hope that I do. The fact is, he took after his father in the department in terms of dedication to whatever project they have. If there is one thing I'm sure my son will have in common with majority of his parallels, it will be his inability to stop blaming himself for things that got out of control. That, and his habit of constantly trying, doing anything and everything to rectify certain situations, to make things better. From the interactions we had, I would suppose that you two are, indeed, alike in that department."

Nico stared at her.

"You're alright with me lying to you?"

He had not meant to ask it, but it slipped out regardless.

She paused, the smile slipping off. "Nico was always an explorer, and that's something that remained, even after he grew up." She sighed, before continuing, "I guess, ever since he started helping out in the research and testing procedures for Hades, I had expected him to follow his father's path. I don't like the idea of him being away from me, but everyone has to grow up at some point of time, and it's time he started living without me, although I would have been happy with a less drastic distance between us. It's alright, though, and I understand that, as well as what you did. It wasn't your fault. You just happened to be the one."

There was no accusation in her voice, only a wary acceptance and resignation, together with a compelling honesty.

They maintained eye contact, briefly, understanding passing between them, before she slipped out of the room, into the corridor, telling him to get some rest, leaving him with his thoughts.

Bianca had not returned home, yet, when Nico went to bed. Somehow, he found himself falling asleep faster than expected, out like a light before she came back, whenever that may be.

The next morning was much the same, as if the little conversation between him and mirror-Maria had never happened. It was harder on Nico, however, now that the little voice in his head was awake again, no longer lulled to sleep by the routines, pointing out everything that was different from his own world. He pressed on, making it through school, lasting all the way until lunch, when he saw Jason holding hands with Bianca.

When had that happened? He was unable to tear his eyes away from them. Percy distracted him, though, like he always did. "Hi," he greeted, way too aware of Jason and Bianca and the fact that Percy would be leaving him soon, since he had already done what he was paid to do.

Percy smiled at him, as if nothing was wrong.

Nico opened his lunch box, not wanting to continue the conversation. The dream last night was not useful at all, just his doppelganger in science class. He missed the lessons back home, even if they were easy, and his classmates were horrible.

At least everything made sense.

He wasn't sure if the dreams was both-ways, though. The idea of him coming back here to find that Percy had already dumped him made him a little nauseous. He would not know what was actually going on, and would more likely than not blame Nico for it.

Nico can't blame him for likely thinking that way. After all, he could not keep Percy in his own world, what was the chances of him succeeding here, when Percy had made it clear to him that he had never felt anything either of them?

He had picked up his sandwich when he saw the little Booklet sitting there, previously hidden, alongside a folded piece of paper and an item wrapped in paper. Taking the sandwich out, he casually covered up the lunch box before starting to eat his lunch, pretending he had not seen anything unusual.

Percy did not call him out on it. Nico took it to mean that he did a good enough job.

He checked, though, when he went home that day and was safe and alone in his room. Bianca had gone out on a date with Jason and Maria was going to be working extra hours on her project.

On it was the title of a book. One he had never seen before. Puzzled, Nico stared at it for a while before deciding that he should, perhaps, go and look at the bookshelf in the living room.

Sure enough, the book was there.

Back in the safety of his room, he opened it to find a stack of papers.

The paper at the top was a list of symbols, and their matching alphabet or character, since, apparently, many of the symbols translated to different languages, especially Asian ones. It made sense, then, that even Leo could not decode the coded notes. It did not escape Nico's notice that the majority of the Asian characters were either Japanese or Chinese.

Folding the papers up, he opened up the wrapped package to find another necklace. It was almost identical to the one he had put on, the one that belongs to mirror-Nico. The main difference, however, was that the bulb was bigger. A closer examination showed that the bottom of it opens up to a tiny compartment.

It was just large enough for Nico to fit the Booklet into it.

Nico took off the necklace he had on, and put this one on instead, vowing to never take it off unnecessarily. The pieces of paper went into the pocket on his jacket, the one he always wore, even to bed. Bianca was the one who woke him, after all, and his pyjamas tend to be short-sleeved, for some reason, meaning that he need other ways to conceal the lack of a timer. It helps, to a certain extent, that his doppelganger was apparently as susceptible to cold as he was.

Then, he finished up his homework before going to bed.

Maria was not home, even when it was midnight. When Bianca had returned home around 11PM, Nico had pretended to be asleep, but he found it hard to fall asleep. Again.

After she was out, he opened his eyes and stared at the bottom of her bunk. His mind rebelled against the notion of sleep, despite how tired Nico was.

This time, though, it was a feeling that was keeping him awake.

For some reason, even as he slowly sank into the recess of unconsciousness, finally giving in to exhaustion, Nico could not shake off the sense of impending doom, a feeling that something was going to happen soon.

Something bad.


	13. Accidents Happen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was only supposed to be just one day in someone else's life, to see what the world could have been like if things had only been the slightest bit different.  
> When the time was 3:59 and he couldn't get back, though, Nico started to realise just how much can go wrong when you climb through the looking glass without looking to make sure that this was a two-way passageway first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was surprisingly easy... I'd apologise for it, but I'm really not sorry, so. Leave a comment when you're done!

'Thoughts'  
"Speech"  
_Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories_

* * *

**Accidents Happen**

The person at the door was persistent, Nico could give whoever it was that.

Both Nico and Bianca had been woken up by the knocks a while ago. Neither of them were strong enough to withstand the lull of sleep, though – the bed was too irresistible. A glance at the clock revealed that it was 4 in the morning.

What sort of person knocks on someone's door at this, frankly, ungodly hour?

They had (well, Nico had, he assumed that Bianca did so too) buried their heads under the pillows, hoping the stranger would go away and leave them alone, to let them sleep, but the knocks continued.

Eventually, Bianca got tired of it. "Nico? Go open the door and tell them to go away and come back later." The words slurred together as she mumbled them, not quite that coherent yet.

Nico weighed the merits of ignoring her against the merits of sending the person at the door away. Finally, he threw the blankets off with a huff. He was a little unsteady on his feet as he got up. Looking up, he noticed that Bianca had returned to her blanket burrito, no longer quite visible. Grumbling about inconsiderate people, Nico grabbed the keys from the table and went to answer the door and find out just who these people are.

He stifled a yawn as he opened the door, trying hard not to sound cross as he snapped, "What is it?"

He held back a wince as the words left his mouth. Even to himself, he sounded sleep-deprived and unreasonably ruffled. That was when he got his first good look at the person standing there at attention.

She was not very tall – the heels did wonders for her height, but they could not disguise the fact that she was, in fact, still only about his height. Unlike the men flanking her, she looked neither imposing nor intimidating, however, there was an aura of authority that was slightly cloying. That gave her away faster than her uniform did.

Not that Nico had felt compelled to obey.

He lost that instinct a long while ago, even before he had started periodically lying to the nice and kind, but stern, councillor they had him visiting for 'compulsive violence' and 'telling lies'.

That was when it registered fully that she was, in fact, some sort of officer.

It set alarm bells off in some recess of his mind, waking him up a little more. Official-looking people tend to be bad news, in his experience. In fact, most of the times, it only gets worse if there were no adults at home.

When she noticed that his attention was now slightly more focused on her, she delivered her news. It was summarised into a simple, short and sweet statement.

He was surer than not that he heard wrongly.

"Pardon?"

"The body of Maria di Angelo was discovered in a car wreckage in a junction between sector 21 and sector 12 of the Atlanta Colony this morning at 12:21AM."

Nico continued staring at her. His brain may have been more alert, sure, but the processing powers were slow. Sorting through her words was easy, making sense of them was hard, though.

"The body of?" he repeated, sounding out the words, sure that he had misheard them the first two times.

"Maria di Angelo was involved in a fatal car accident as she did not buckle her seatbelt."

The full meaning sank in then. Nico swallowed briefly, opening his mouth to deny it verbally before realising that no words were coming out. There was no way Maria, careful, cautious and diligent Maria, would die in a fatal car accident because she did not buckle her seatbelt.

He meant to scream that at her, knowing that his mother was too cautious to forget something as simple as buckling her seat belt, however, what came out instead was, "Why was she in Atlanta?"

It was a random bit of information that had stuck earlier, since she was supposed to be here, in Olympia, with them. Atlanta was very far away. It was in the middle of the godforsaken ocean, for gods' sake, there was no way she would go there and expect to be back within one day, which means that she would have told them she was going away, that they should not expect her back for a while.

The officer looked a little caught off guard for a while, clearly not expecting that question. She went back to being serious almost instantaneously, looking all professional as she replied, "I am sure she has told you and your sister about her conference there."

If Nico had not been looking, he would have missed the moment earlier. He would have missed the way she clenched her left fist a little tighter as she spoke. He had been looking, however, so he noticed those little things. He had the upper hand, not that she realised it, because he would know when she was lying.

She did not know he knew her tell.

It did not answer his question, though, and he felt like pursuing the matter for a while, before the rational side of him told him that it was safer to pretend he believed them.

Instead, he asked, "How did she die?"

Alright, he had not meant to say that.

But what they had said simply sounded too ludicrous to be true.

Calmly, in the same tone as before, she replied, "Another car crashed into hers, and as she did not buckle her seatbelt, she was killed on impact."

"But why?"

He was aware that he probably sounded quite dumb, asking her a question she had already answered a few times before.

Apparently, she was too professional, or had been unlucky enough to be assigned the job of revealing the news to the deceased's family many times before and was too used to dealing with this.

She smiled patiently at him, saying, empathically, "I'm sure you are quite overwhelmed, and you find it hard to accept the fact. I can understand that, take all the time you need. Accidents happen, after all."

He gave her a blank look.

"This isn't an accident."

It slipped out before he could stop it. He was positive he was glaring at her, too.

Her smile became tighter, at that. "Do you mean to say that this was arranged? If so, do you have any suspects in mind?"

The audacity of that statement knocked the wind out of Nico. Yes, he wanted to scream. Yes, this was arranged, and I have suspects, they are the members of your perfect little council, the group of people who must have somehow found out about me, the people who had locked my father up for something he had not done.

Even if he said it, though, this officer, at the bottom of the food chain, would not know anything. She could end up actually believing that he was insane. After all, there was a reason they were sent here instead of some higher ranking official, who would definitely know what was going on.

There was too much anger, however, at their ignorance, at the way they seemed to think that they could play him and his sister, that they could simply manipulate their lives. The way they thought that they were stupid little kids who were totally unaware of what was going on around them.

"She's too careful, I would know my mother and she won't die because she forgot to buckle her seatbelt, or because of malfunctioning seatbelts or traffic lights or whatever, so you have the wrong information or the wrong person. That's not my mother in the car."

He was well aware that his tone had been raised as he ended off, and he was prepared to slam the door on them in fury when Bianca wandered into the room, rubbing at her eyes, asking, "What's taking you so long?"

She spotted the officer the same time the officer saw her.

Nico could see her suddenly a little more awake, more alert, and more wary. She stared at her while she asked, a little flatly, "Why is there a TimeKeeper at our doorstep at 4.30 AM in the morning?"

The woman stiffened a little, as if offended at being addressed this way, but Nico's interest was fully captured by that question. He made sure not to let it show, but internally, his mind was abuzz.

From his various readings, he knew that TimeKeepers were basically 'guardians' of different sectors, like the law management back home – police and the like. Except, they dealt in time, and they were kind of like one man powerhouses, handling every crime that arises in their area by themselves. And, of course, no one really sees them that often.

Which, now that he thought about it, explained why she talked about the places in sectors, and not by the names they were commonly known by.

Bianca looked a little suspicious and confused, now. "What's going on?" she demanded, stepping forward.

The TimeKeeper stepped forward, too. "I regret to have to bear the news, but as I have just informed your brother, your mother was involved in a fatal car accident earlier on."

"A car accident?" she repeated, disbelief colouring her tone. "My mother would never die because she was not watching out on the road!"

Patiently and calmly, the officer stated, predictably that Maria was not the only drive involved, that the other driver was the reckless one. Then, of course, she went on to say, "As she was not wearing her seatbelt, she died on impact."

Bianca looked at her incredulously. "Do you honestly expect me to believe that my mother, the most careful person I have ever known, would die because she had forgotten to put on her seat belt? For gods' sake, in the fourteen years I could remember as her daughter, she had never, not even once, forgotten to inform us that we have to buckle up, every single time we stepped into the car!"

Unconsciously, she had stepped forward, in front of Nico, confronting the woman.

She stood her ground. "I am only reporting the truth."

Nico wanted to strangle her. She looked so composed, so detached, as if this was nothing to her. Alright, it was probably nothing to her, but being like that was not helping him calm his ire. Apparently, it did not help Bianca calm down either.

She exploded at the woman.

"Don't lie to me! She's not dead, she would not die because some stupid car slammed into her car, she never not put on her seat belt, she is not that careless, don't you dare suggest that and why on earth are you looking so … so calm and  _happy!_ "

She was breathing harder when she was done, her voice a pitch higher, posed and ready to attack the woman by pouncing on her and tearing her hair out until she stopped telling her that their mother was dead.

Nico knew that that was likely what was actually going on in her mind. He felt the same way, just, he knew that there was a lot more to this than it seems.

The TimeKeeper, however, seems done with this. The man behind her, to her right, had tapped her on the shoulder, and she had stepped back, away from them.

Before she departed, she told them, as calmly as ever, "The trail would start in two days, and the person who has done this will receive the appropriate punishments. You should receive your mother's body within a week."

She left them standing there, half frozen in shock and denial, staring at the empty open door, trying to swallow the fact that their mother was likely gone.

In a sudden fit, Bianca stormed forward and slammed the door shut with a resounding 'BANG', startling Nico a little. She turned around, glaring fiercely at him, before falling back against it. Her eyes lost the fierceness as she sank down slowly until she was curled up against the door.

"She's not dead," Bianca muttered, staring into the air dully.

"Not dead," she repeated hollowly. To convince herself, or Nico, he wasn't sure.

If Bianca had wrapped her arms around her knees, buried her face in it and started sobbing silently, no one had to know but them.

Nico had swayed slightly on the spot, wanting to comfort her, knowing, at the same time, that she would reject him.

For the rest of the night, all the way until the sun came up, they stayed where they were, neither of them moving away.

They would deal with the new day when it comes, for now, they mourn.

A fire ignited in Nico somewhere in the night, telling him that this was enough.

They locked his father up, and they killed his mother's doppelganger, someone who was good to him, a woman who did not deserve this.

They would burn, for that.

He would see that it would happen.


	14. The Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was only supposed to be just one day in someone else's life, to see what the world could have been like if things had only been the slightest bit different.  
> When the time was 3:59 and he couldn't get back, though, Nico started to realise just how much can go wrong when you climb through the looking glass without looking to make sure that this was a two-way passageway first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got a bit out of hand, I suppose. So, I split it into half. Of course, half of the reason was also because it was getting harder to connect the scenes, and I kinda hate line breaks, so. Leave me a review when you're done! Also, I can be found on tumblr as ivory-kelly-1969.  
> Update: I've reconnected the chapter, so this is just one gigantic chapter that actually isn't that long.

 

'Thoughts'  
"Speech"  
_Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories_

* * *

**The Aftermath**

The siblings spent the days leading up to the trial in a daze, a little lost, not quite sure what to do anymore, since, even their mother was gone. Nico had given up on controlling his impulse, going on a cleaning spree in the morning when he finally moved from his spot standing vigil at the door.

Surprisingly, Bianca did not comment, simply studying him blankly from her spot as he scrubbed down every available surface and then went out to buy more cleaning supplies when they ran out. Although, given the circumstances, perhaps it was not surprising after all.

No room was left undusted except the two rooms that neither of them could bring themselves to open the door to.

For Nico, this was the second time his mother walked out of the door one day and simply never returned.

Only, this time, it was permanent in a way it hadn't been before – this time, she was not coming home not because she choose to stay away.

This time, she's not returning because she couldn't, not anymore.

As per some law somewhere, they were excused from school for them to deal with the news and decide what they would do for the funeral before they go to the trial.

For the first day, Bianca was content with watching Nico work himself to the ground making every surface of the house shine. He had to stop somewhere, though. Slumping down against the sofa, Nico faced Bianca. They spent some time staring at each other silently, wondering what they could do next even as they tried to find another way to interpret what they were told. Eventually, though, Nico succumbed to his hunger and stood back up, opening the cupboard only to realise that there was nothing there that he could make a meal for himself with.

Swallowing down the emotions that were starting to well up once more, Nico slammed the door shut with more force than warranted, suddenly feeling the urge to cry. He stalked back to the living room, ignoring the fact that he was starving and exhausted and just so sick of life.

Bianca looked away as he sunk down next to her. Nico spent the night staring at the sterile living room, trying to see the dirt and dust that he could just feel was sullying this place. By sunrise the next day, though, they decided silently that this was not a good way to cope. The phone had just rung again. Neither of them picked up, choosing to ignore the caller.

Bianca went into the kitchen, probably with the intentions of making something edible. She exited much the same way Nico did, adamantly refusing to look at her little brother standing there. Nico ignored the spike of hurt. They were both grieving, after all. Even if the woman was not really his mother, she was the closest he had to one.

Unbidden, Nico thought about how his doppelganger would have to take this news. Since he was not here now, how was he meant to grieve when eventually he got back here and realised that his mother was gone? He was an intruder here, Nico knew, but even he could see that Maria truly cared, that she likely showered her family with love when they were still a family. How was he going to handle knowing that he missed the last months with his mother, believing that he could have been here and could have done something?

It made him guilty, he shouldn't have been here. Why did he ever think that it would be a good idea to come here?

As they were both wandering the house now, unanimously, both Nico and Bianca ended up in their parents' bedroom.

It was oddly sterile – still and unslept in, with a neatly made bed, as if no one has ever lived in this room. The fact that no one would be sleeping here for a long, long time to come was a sombre thought: their mother was no longer around, their father, Hades, he could not come home.

The doorbell rang.

It startled Nico out of trying to picture life without his parents. He had gotten used to not having mother around, but to lose both of them was something he had never contemplated. Now, it was happening, and, well. He had never missed home so much.

They were both reluctant to open the door, though. Neither of them particularly wanted to face whoever might be on the other side of the door, both wanting to just be left alone to grieve in peace.

The door opened itself as they stood there. Actually, it was practically blasted off its hinges, the way it was shoved open violently, making both siblings take a step back in shock.

Jason was standing there, Leo and Percy hovering behind. There was an unknown car sitting in the drive way. As Nico stared, Leo mouthed 'I'm sorry' before walking off to the car. It drove off, leaving the other two at the doorsteps.

"Are you alright?" Jason asked, breaking the silence.

Bianca teared up at that. She didn't cry, though, looking down instead, refusing to meet Jason's eyes. As Jason stepped forward, her self-control failed and she met him halfway, throwing her arms around him and bursting into tears. Nico could see her shoulders heaving as she sobbed. Jason, obviously, had not been anticipating the waterworks. To his credit, he hugged her back after a moment and patted her back. The position was awkward, sure, and public, at the doorstep, but neither of them seemed to realise that.

Percy, though. The hint of uncertainty in Percy's eyes as he turned Nico _hurts_ , it just serves to remind Nico that their relationship was not real, that Percy was not – has never been – in love with him, no matter how true the reverse was. It was so obvious, to Nico, that Percy was hesitating because he had no idea what he should be doing, because he drew the line between them as friends and nothing more when he told Nico the truth.

At this point of time, Nico was not sure if Mr. Unknown was still paying Percy, but, going by the fact that Percy was still hanging around, he assumed that the answer was yes. Until Percy dumps him, though, he was still officially Nico's boyfriend, even if he said that he was never in love with Nico, had made that fact excessively clear during the first Demigod meeting Nico was brought to. He was allowed to be in love with Percy, then. He'd keep this up, for Miss Sally's sake, if nothing else.

No one needed to know that he was, or wasn't acting.

Either way, it meant that it was up to him to initiate anything at all.

He could, by all rights, follow Bianca's lead. Maybe, just perhaps, it would be harder for Percy to come up with a reason to leave him for Annabeth if he did this well enough, made it real enough. Then, perhaps, he could pretend for a while longer. After all, ever since the first confession, he had never broached the topic of being paid to date Nico with him.

It wasn't fair, though.

Sure, it wasn't Percy's fault that this was the only way to keep Miss Sally alive, but there should not have been a need to drag someone else (him) into this.

Instead of seeking out comfort like Bianca had, like he wanted to, he pushed down his feelings and walked away from them, towards his room. There's better things to be done, even if he only just realised what he could have spent the last two days doing.

Of course, Percy followed him.

Monotonously, Nico instructed Percy to close the door as he removed the necklace, put it back on, and took out the pieces of papers. "This is everything in the booklet, if I'm not wrong."

Percy stared at him.

Nico swallowed down the hurt that welled up when he realised that Percy didn't trust him, continuing, "Maria knows that I'm not from this world, and she knew about Hades, my father, to, since Hades from this world must have let her in on his research, too. I passed it to her the day before. Before."

He did not expect to be unable to continue. Maria was not even his mother.

"It's okay, you know, you can cry, there's no shame in that," Percy started gently after a while. "You don't have to pretend that this is nothing."

Nico looked at Percy flatly.

"It is nothing, there's an underground war going on, Percy, and I don't have time for this. This isn't important. What we're trying to achieve was important, stopping the bloody council is important, getting everything wrong in this godforsaken world back onto the right track is important, this stupid feelings are not important, besides, Maria isn't even my mother. She was never around anyway, back home, it doesn't matter either way, what I was trying to say was that she was assassinated, there's something wrong with this whole sodding business, they killed her to silence her or do something to that effect. I know they didn't know a single thing about me, my father, this whole family, but they knew that something was wrong, must have figured out – "

Percy cut the spiel off with a 'slow down, Nico'. Then, apparently, the words caught up.

"Your father?"

"He switched over long before I did, he was the one they locked up, one more thing – "

"Your." Percy stopped, thinking about something else. "Who's they?"

"The Council, who else?"

"Why?"

Nico snapped then. "Hell if I know, why would I? I'm not part of them, what I do know is that they are out for my family for some reason, I'd bet you everything I have that the person who paid you was one of them, or employed by them –" Percy flinched at that, but Nico steamrolled on, not having noticed it, "they even bugged everything outside of this room. I don't trust them, they never trusted us, if I want to be able to live here, normally, they need to be gone, why do you think I say that we should focus on spreading the fact that there was enough time wealth, then eradicate the Council?"

"They bugged this place?"

"Of course they did, what did you expect?"

Percy seemed to have nothing to say in response to that. Nico had lost his steam, too, no longer able to summon the energy to be angry at Percy, at anything, at all.

An oppressive silence fell, at least, until when Bianca shoved the door open. Her eyes were bloodshot from crying. After a while, Bianca asked, in a small voice, if Jason could stay here tonight.

Nico ended up evacuating to the couch in the living room – Bianca and Jason shared the bottom bunk, Percy got the top to himself, since it was not safe to fit two people there.

Surprisingly, he fell asleep the moment laid down. Emotional exhaustion does that too, Nico supposes.

_Nico stalked off down the streets, keeping his head down. No one had to see him, no one did. It made sense, they didn't need to._

_"_ _What's going on?" Hazel asked, hurrying after him. "Nico, wait, please."_

_He ignored her, picking up his pace instead, concentrating on the tiles beneath him. The tiles that gave way to the trodden path with worn cobblestones._

_"_ _Please, Nico. Just trying to help here!" She sounded a little out of breath now._

_Her voice was a little fainter, too. "If you don't tell me what's going on, how can I help you?!" she shouted at him. Her voice was a little wobbly, now that he was listening. She sounded on the verge of tears. He didn't need to turn around to know that she had stopped there._

_That's good._

_That's good, wasn't it? He needed to be by himself, if only for a little while._

_"_ _I don't need her around," he muttered under his breath. The wind carried the words away. That's alright. That's just fine._

_"_ _She's just a distraction. Not a welcome one, either."_

_Even to himself, it was not convincing._

Nico woke up, feeling a little out of breath. Burying his face in his hand, he closed his eyes. "Hazel…"

How could he have forgotten?

Why had he stopped thinking about her?

When did he stop looking for a way back?

* * *

Someone was knocking on the door once more.

The knocks startled Nico awake from the daze he just realised he had drifted into. The clock told him that it was time.

The trial was a mess, literally. It messed Bianca up a little, too, when they were told that no one was allowed to follow them in as this is a private matter. Thus, neither Percy nor Jason were allowed to be there. Before leaving, though, Nico had made sure to pull Percy aside and task him with the job of passing on the booklet and the papers to Leo so they had a little more time to work on these.

The actual trial was a joke, really, a farce that even Bianca, in all her grief, should have been able to see through.

First and foremost, of course, was the fact that the accusations in the court did not tally with what the TimeKeeper who had delivered the news told them – in the stand, they said that the accused had robbed her of her time after hitting her, resulting in her death.

The TimeKeeper had said that she died on impact. Furthermore, she said it was an accident, a hit and run – they say that it was planned beforehand.

Then, when the defendant first stepped into the court, the first thing he did was to turn around and declare as loudly as he could that he was not guilty.

"The only thing I did was something they would never allow the public to know about, the Council wants me silenced and I stand by the fact that I have never done whatever they have currently accused me of doing!" he had shouted.

Almost as if on cue, a horde of guards materialised and swarmed the stand. The next thing Nico knew, the suspect was handcuffed, gagged, blindfolded, pretty much lost in the crowd as he was led – dragged – away, and both him and his sister were in a white-washed room somewhere. The original TimeKeeper, the one who had delivered the news – she appeared out of nowhere, apologising for the behaviour of the criminal, promising that he would pay for his crimes and that such things would never happen again.

Bianca was clearly overwhelmed by the speed with which the things were happening, and Nico would have been overwhelmed, too, if he had not had something to focus on, something that halted his mind and allowed him to muddle through everything else without really expending any energy.

The thing was: right before the hustle of activity, as the suspect was proclaiming his innocence, he had turned around. Their eyes met briefly. In that split second of eye contact, Nico read the desperation, all the emotions stirring in the accused's eyes. The most prominent, however, was a spark that struck a chord in Nico. It was the reason Nico believed that he was innocent, that the Council had knowingly framed him.

In his eyes, Nico could see the same spark of determination, of righteous fire, he could see in the eyes of all the members of the Demigods. There was that reckless glint of someone with nothing left to lose, too, coupled with the grief of losing someone important.

It told a story, something that made Nico wonder for a while before realising that it was not important, not now. The story it told, though, made Nico certain that he had done something that made him dangerous to the Council. Perhaps, he had a team too, once, like the Demigods. Only, instead of killing him off straightaway, the Council decided to frame him for this, to kill two birds with one stone, in a sense. This way, they need not arrange for an 'accident'.

It made his blood run cold.

An accident.

They were hustled out of the courthouse soon enough, but Nico was no longer present, mentally. His brain was stuck on the two words.

An accident.

Both Jason and Percy were waiting for them at their doorsteps, sitting there. They stood up when the two of them were approaching, looking quite worried. The siblings simply entered the house alone.

An accident.

That was the biggest reason he failed to notice the way there were way too many eyes on him, that the TimeKeeper now had her eyes narrowed a little as she looked away from him at a spot further away, failed to see how Bianca was staring vacantly as she shuffled along.

Failed to see that they never left, that they stood around even as Nico and Bianca entered the house.

While Bianca lingered near the door with Jason, though, Nico went straight for his room. Percy trailed after him, of course, while Jason stayed with Bianca.

He could not summon the energy to be bothered, however. He did not realise that both Jason and Bianca had actually followed them up, with Bianca bringing up the rear, either.

Gods, he had not realised just how drained he was.

The drowsiness was starting to make his eyelids droop, he could not quite concentrate on much else. His legs were suddenly leaden, a little wobbly too.

The pillow and the bed called to him, a siren, beckoning him to the oblivion of sleep.

The next thing he knew, he was blinking up at Percy and Jason, both of whom were looking a little panicky, as if they were not quite sure what to do. The relief was palpable when they realised that Nico was awake.

Which leads to the question – when did he even fall asleep? He couldn't recall what happened before, how he ended up in the bed. His mouth was really dry, though, and there was that cottony taste he could not get rid of.

"What's going on?" Nico finally asked, giving up on trying to figure out what had happened. "Where's Bianca?"

"I. Don't you remember?" Jason asked cautiously.

"Not really."

"You passed out," Percy clarified. "A day, in fact. We were worried."

Nico took a moment to process this.

"That doesn't answer where Bianca is."

"Well…" Jason started hesitantly. The uneasiness came back to Nico.

Percy continued for Jason when it became clear he had no idea what to say. "Someone kidnapped her when we were not aware. They left us a letter, a letter for you. They want money."

"What?" Nico demanded, fully alert now. There was alarm plainly visible in his voice as he straightened up abruptly, holding a hand out.

Except, sudden movements was apparently a bad idea. The faint pounding in his head intensified and black spots formed, forcing him to use his hand to support himself and stay still, hoping that things would get better.

After everything came back into focus, he held out his hand once more.

Jason understood, without him saying anything, that he wanted the letter.

After scanning it, Nico placed it down. His hands were tight around the letter, fisting wrinkles into it. Jason and Percy remained silent, waiting for his response.

After a long while, however, Jason decided that he might need to intervene. He suggested, rather tentatively, that the Demigods could help gather the time needed.

It made Nico's vision go white for a while. He took a while to compose himself before speaking up. When Nico finally spoke, his voice was tinged with some spectacular, suppressed rage that was audible despite his volume.

"We're not complying." After saying this out loud, he gained some momentum. "These people are Council members, if not, people working closely with the Council, they're trying to fish out the people of the resistance, the accused was one, possibly from another group – if you help amass, they would somehow be able to track the digital traces, no matter how good Leo is at removing them. These people masquerade as random kidnappers only interested in money. Time. Whatever, they do this for a reason. They want names, they want identities, and we cannot give them that."

Taking a breath, Nico continued, "They will never comply, if we approach the Council, like they told us not to, they will kill her, but if we comply, they would kill her too. It's common sense – if you pay the kidnappers, they kill the hostage."

"Going to try and break them out, then?" Percy suggested. The way he said it, it sounded like a joke. Nico took it as a suggestion, though.

They stared at him in shock.

Then, Percy snorted. "How are we going to even try to do that?"

"We have two days," Nico repeated determinedly. "It has to be enough for us to get them out, there's no way I'm paying this ransom. And, there's no better ideas now, is there?"

After a bit of consideration, they both agreed on that. Then, Percy said that he was in for this, as was Jason. While Jason really did not look happy to have had his choice made for him, he nodded his consent when Nico looked at him.

Internally, Nico let out a sigh of relief. Even he would admit that he could not do this alone, at least, at this point, he had two helpers.

An hour of brainstorming later, Jason suggested that they get the rest of the Demigods in on this too.

"No." Percy shot it down immediately.

"Percy's right, we can't drag everyone into this," Nico agreed.

"Then how are we going to do this?" Jason snapped. "We're just three person, Nico, and none of us are capable of getting access to half of the things we need even with the simplest plan we have so far, never mind that we need a technician and a back-up team and people to get them out of the cities into the wild!"

Percy stared at him like he had suddenly turned into a stranger, while Nico simply hung his head and groaned silently. Jason was right, the three of them were not enough, but he really did not want to compromise any more people.

The two of them, they would have stuck to this regardless, firstly because they were there when this kidnapping happened and Percy most likely felt responsible – he was loyal to a fault, and, Jason, well. Bianca was his girlfriend, after all, even if their relationship was still brand new. Actually, because his relationship was new, Jason would bother to go find her.

Regardless, when they found out about this, they would not have walked. The same goes for the rest, Nico knew, which was why he had not wanted to let them know.

While Nico was trying to figure out why he had suddenly developed a conscience, Percy had come to a compromise with Jason.

"We're going to get Leo, Rachel and Reyna in on this."

Nico stared at the two of them.

"What?"

Jason explained their reasoning. "Leo has all the information from the booklet, Nico, that would be a huge advantage to us, Rachel's father is actually suspicious of her, so by getting her in on this, she would run with us, while, at the same time, we'd be getting another helper."

"And, Reyna's mother is a doctor. When I run, they'd cut my mother off, or cart her off to an interrogation room to try fish information out of her, no matter what, she'd be either dead or better off dead. So, Reyna has to be in on this, her mother is supportive of our cause but she cannot help if she does not know," Percy continued for Jason.

Nico could not help chewing his lips a little.

"Fine," he finally conceded. "How are we going to inform them, though?"


	15. Decisions, Decisions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was only supposed to be just one day in someone else's life, to see what the world could have been like if things had only been the slightest bit different.  
> When the time was 3:59 and he couldn't get back, though, Nico started to realise just how much can go wrong when you climb through the looking glass without looking to make sure that this was a two-way passageway first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I hope that this chapter doesn't disappoint. It was disappointing to me, but this is about the best I could make it.

'Thoughts'  
"Speech"  
_Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories_

* * *

**Decisions, Decisions**

Rachel was earlier than expected, as was the other two.

Then again, so were they.

"What are we here to discuss?" Reyna went straight to the point.

"We need to get Bianca out of this Colony, if you're on board with the plan, you'll be helping out too," Percy replied, apparently having anticipated this question. As he talked, he casually dropped a hand on Nico's shoulder.

Nico almost dropped the books he was holding.

Jason came around then, continuing Percy's answer for him. "Helping us means that you'd probably have to run with us, though, and Bianca, to the wilderness outside the colonies." He then nodded at Leo. "But we'll discuss the technicalities later, I heard you found things we really need to see?"

Leo stared at him for a while before shaking his head a little. "Right! So, there's all this things that Hades left for us…" The steamrolling he did overloaded Nico. He never quite realised that Maria actually left them such a large treasure trove.

Apparently, even Reyna found this a little overwhelming. When she raised her hand, Leo paused and looked at her expectantly.

"You're saying that… Hades had a vigilante group."

"Well… yes, he's actually pretty badass, but he was really just a contact, you know, the middle man. Guess us demigods are not the only ones out there trying to keep people from dying unnecessarily, though. There's a map and a list of contact and all. But that's not really important, the best things he had are the blueprints, there are blueprints for weird vehicles and weapons and time counters and buildings!"

Nico looked at the 'weird vehicle' Leo was pointing at, since he had shown them some of the blueprints. "That's a spaceship design," he decided after a while.

"A what?" Leo asked.

"One of those things you fly into outer-space. It looks like the one out of Star Wars."

"You can go to outer space?!" Leo looked ready to get up and start trying to make this thing happen. Nico was suddenly regretting telling him about this. Reyna, though, have had enough of this, apparently, and brought the conversation back to the other sympathisers out there.

Leo pouted a little, before sighing and relenting, spreading out some maps. "Well, there's a map for each colony and one unfinished, gigantic map of the whole area interlining the colonies. There's a bunch of refugee campsites –" He pointed at some of the blue clusters. "-and he underground passages linking them, or just pathways, I can't figure out what that's meant to be, but, from what's there, the Hunters and the NightWatch are real. They aren't legend. Neither are the Amazons, apparently."

This roused the interests of all of them, except for Nico, who has absolutely no idea what they were on about. Then he saw some of the footnotes on one of the blueprints Leo had left lying around. "The Council locks up the people opposing them in public buildings?"

That got all of their attention.

"I was getting there," Leo started. "See all this orange stars? They are the buildings that have containment cells, apparently. The red ones are the places with basements that have an entrance to the underground passageway to one of the orange stars, or all of them in the vicinity. It was not very clear."

There was a silence as they absorbed the information.

"Well," Jason hedged carefully. "Since we're on this topic now, let's just get started on eliminating the ones where Bianca most likely won't be held at, alright?"

They whittled down the focus to the places within Olympia. The ones outside this colony had to go, obviously, they were too far away. There wasn't time for the Council to ship her there without letting too many people in on this scheme.

Surprisingly, but the end of the hour, they have eliminated a large number of possible buildings for a wide variety of reasons – too public, not secure enough, too many people, etcetera.

Eventually, it came down to two buildings – the Maxwell Audit Building and the Nigeria Falls Treatment Facility. As the name suggested, Nigeria Falls was a treatment facility housing specialists for everything. It was the only one in this colony. It was also one of the previous facilities Hades had been placed in, apparently, according to some of the annotations on the map.

Then there was Maxwell.

That was where the majority of the employers directly working for the Council worked at – Creators and the likes have their largest offices in this building. Which, of course, means that there would be an extremely high chance that the letter they were given was written by one of the people working there. The place was extremely secure, it would be the hardest building to break into.

In the end, they decided to focus their efforts on the Maxwell building, mostly because they reasoned that the Council would never keep Bianca in a building they have once kept Hades in, on the off chance that Hades might have mentioned it to his children.

It helps, of course, that this building was the closest one to Nico's house.

As they dug through the information they have on this building, Nico was reminded rather forcefully, once more, that this world was rather different from his own.

One of the things he learnt: Computers do actually exist in this world. They were just extremely rare and extremely outdated. These computers in the building were practically ancient by Nico's standards.

The most important difference here, though, was that their cameras were not CCTV, they were really just cameras fixed onto the different spots, recording the whole time.

Unlike back home, the people do not actually monitor the cameras, they simply have employers that come down to remove and replace the tapes of each and every camera present in the building at the end of the day to review the events of the day that was recorded. Which, of course, explains the low number of cameras present even in the most secure building – each tape has to be reviewed individually, every single day.

This would certainly make their work easier.

So long as they avoided the guards or knocked them out, they would be able to get by the security relatively easily. A manual activation of the intruder alert is required. Of course, the cameras did also mean that unless they walk around to dismantle every camera present to remove the tape, after the Council clean up, they would know exactly who had been involved.

He told them as much.

Predictably, all three of them said something along the lines of taking calculated risks for the better good. Rachel, of course, added that she would have to get started on running sooner or later, and she would rather it be sooner since that means that she would not be alone.

Leo, though. His reply was a smirk, coupled with the words, "Well, it's not a life without risks, and while my luck's like an unstable blind chipmunk on way too many drugs, it can still be sort of counted on, you know?"

Nico almost snorted at that. It made absolutely no sense, but it was the sort of thing he would expect from the other boy. Where the boy got it from, he really did not know. He was not sure if he wanted to know, either.

It was gratifying to note that they were still willing to stick with this plan, though.

"Well, look at the time. Why don't we get out of here for a while, then regroup? All of us need to sort out some things and get ready. There's that blind alleyway, we'll meet there in an hour, alright?" Rachel suggested after a moment of silence. Leo shrugged and began gathering all the pieces of papers spread out on the floor.

Nico moved to help him.

Even as the two of them were cleaning up, the other four were clearing out.

At the alleyway, Leo was the last to arrive with shades and a baseball cap on, toting a bag. It looked like their schoolbag. The moment he got in, though, he dumped the bag on the floor and opened it to reveal some… things.

Things which, according to Leo, were side projects he built when he was bored that he had modified to become some sort of one-way communication devices with a variety of functions varying from item to item.

There was one short, though.

As they were discussing who was going to be the odd one out, something apparently occurred to Jason. "What about your father?"

Nico paused. Then, determining that Jason was actually talking to him, he asked, "What about him?"

"What are we going to do for him?" Jason clarified. The traffic in the background was as loud and present as ever, but, here in this shady alleyway, it was deathly silent – all the others had stopped talking, focusing their attention onto Nico.

Nico froze when he remembered that his father was the one here. Logically going through this, though, they did not have time. If they were to go for his father, they would be leaving Bianca behind. He, they, could only save one of them.

'Leave her,' something in the back of his head said. 'She's already dead, anyway, you're father, on the other hand, isn't.'

Nico practically snarled at that voice.

"We leave him."

That was the only option, after all. It would take at least another day for them to figure out how to get to Delphi to get Hades out and into the woods. That was a day they could not afford to spare, Nico knew.

Besides, there was no guarantees that he had not been moved to another high security area.

The decision was still hard to make, though, and getting the words out felt like a betrayal – the person whose life was on the line was his own father, from his own world, not the doppelganger who he could still reason away as a stranger he technically did not know.

Anyways, if it were up to his father, he would chose Bianca too.

He could see all of them staring at him, though, judging him silently. "What?" he snapped. "I'm trying to be practical here!"

"He's your father," Percy explained. As if that clarified everything.

"I can't get to him the normal way without rousing suspicion, and we don't have the time, it's better to cut the losses and leave him be," Nico tried to justify. It was a weak defence, he knew.

"I could get a fast pass there," Rachel volunteered a little hesitantly. "We could still try to get both of them out."

Nico's eyes flitted over to her in surprise. Then, he looked down. "Thanks for the offer, Rachel, but only direct family is allowed to visit him, and, given that that consists solely of Bianca, mother and I, and two of us are not available, I think we can safely say that it is not plausible."

"Rachel could say that she needs to interview the person who basically invented the first time counter, she does run the school paper, it's a valid reason," Reyna pointed out. "Besides, it sounds a little like you don't really want to get him out."

Nico looked back up at the accusation. It hurt that she could assume something like that. A little flatly, he stated that Bianca was dead in his world.

There was no reply to that.

"He's my father, I know him better than any of you, and I know that if it was a choice, between him and Bianca, he would choose Bianca. Even if he lacked the natural instinct to want his child to stay alive, he would want to see that she could have a chance to continue living, regardless of the fact that this is not our world. Trying to get both of them would mean that we would divert our resources and our focus, and, given the circumstances, it is highly possible that we would not succeed within the given timeframe, so we could not complete before the deadline. Even if it meant giving up on him completely, I would rather we don't risk not getting anything done at all."

None of them seemed to have any opinions regarding that revelation, having nothing left to say about this matter. "Well," Leo coughed after the festering silence got too heavy for him. "We still have to decide who's going to be left out of the loop."

It was an awkward attempt to dispel the silence, but the other tried.

It was a relief when the forced discussions ended and they settled for Jason and Percy sticking close together to share one device.

This just meant that they could get started.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave a comment to let me know what you think about this story! And, you can find me on tumblr under username ivory-kelly-1969


	16. Into the Wilderness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was only supposed to be just one day in someone else's life, to see what the world could have been like if things had only been the slightest bit different.  
> When the time was 3:59 and he couldn't get back, though, Nico started to realise just how much can go wrong when you climb through the looking glass without looking to make sure that this was a two-way passageway first.
> 
> (NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner)

'Thoughts'  
"Speech"  
 _Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories_

* * *

**Into the Wilderness**

The plan was simple – make their way down, get Bianca, make their way back up, run for the wilderness as fast as they could before the authorities could figure out who had been involved and catch up. And, while they were at that, have Miss Sally transferred out of the hospital into Reyna's mother's care, such that the two of them had time to drop off the grid.

There was about nine different routes connecting the cell and the doors, which gave them quite a lot of options. It would have been good if there was more people, but, as it was, there was only six of them, and only five of them would be going down.

Surprisingly, as Nico had discovered during their planning, everyone, with the exception of Rachel, had some form of combat training before – official or unofficial. Jason and Percy went to some fencing club before Miss Sally got sick, after which Percy quit and continued learning from Jason, Reyna was part of the school wrestling team – no surprises there, and it was only slightly shocking that she was once part of the boxing team as well, before it got disbanded due to the members transferring elsewhere.

Even Leo had once been part of a discus club, where he was their best thrower, since hammer throwing was apparently outlawed. Given how well Leo seemed to be able to handle the hammer, Nico had the feeling that he could play whack-a-mole quite easily with it as well – not that he would, of course, Leo was the nice boy that does not like to hurt anyone that did not hurt him first.

All this experience with fighting meant that they knew how to knock people out, at the very least, regardless of the fact that all this people were meant to be well-trained experts. At the very least, they probably were not actually expecting a bunch of teenagers to actually risk it and come down here to fight them, which would give Nico and the rest enough of an advantage.

Therefore, Rachel was assigned the job of securing their getaway vehicle – it helped that she learnt how to pickpocket from her mother before one of her experiments blew up and got her killed. Seraphina was a scientist, apparently, and a passionate one at that, completely dedicated to eradicate the MaiVisto. The knowledge of how to use Ketamine to power weapons had been her last gift to the Colonies.

After Rachel had scuttled off with one of the three devices that could broadcast messages as well as receive it, it was decided that Leo, Percy and Jason would pick two routes to clear on their way down, and, while they were trying to figure out how to get the cell door open to get Bianca – and possibly some others – out, Reyna and Nico would clear out the remaining routes.

The two two-way devices were split – one for Percy and Jason, one for Reyna.

They got to work then.

Surprisingly, for Nico, he got lucky. For reasons unknown, the routes he got were pretty empty. Some grunts were coming from Reyna's end, where surprised and quite high-pitched shouts sounded occasionally. Nico had to supress the urge to wince when the latest guard – victim – actually screeched.

From feed streaming in from Jason and Percy, it became apparent that Jason was the one with the device. He delivered a whispered report of how things were going on their side every few steps. Then, evidently, they reached their destination and met up with Leo.

There was some discussion on what the thing was and how it could be opened.

A litany of muttered curses on Leo's part as he tried to crack the security code they had apparently set became the only sound on the channel.

Nico was wondering just what sort of security they had there, when he heard a little sob. He paused where he was. Before just going down the route he was going to, he turned around, to see the dead end route on the other side.

There was a little girl huddling against the wall at the end.

Well, okay, not very little, but she was likely around ten, Nico thinks. Instinctively, he looked over his shoulders to check that there was no one around to keep him company.

After confirming that he was the only one aside from the child, he approached the girl cautiously, nervous about both the kid and what he would do when he gets cornered (he doesn't trust his luck to hold out).

"What's your name?"

The girl looked up at him mutely, wide-eyed. The tear tracks haven't quite dried, and her eyes were still red. It wasn't hard to guess where he had heard the sob.

Nico moved a little closer and crouched down so that they were eye level. He tried to smile, hoping that it would reassure her. "I'm Nico. Who are you?"

For a long while, there was no response. Then, softly, almost inaudibly, the kid muttered, "Asilda."

Nico considered that a win. "Asilda? That's a nice name."

Silence.

"Why are you here, Asilda?" Nico asked then. The feed that had died off chose then to crackle back to life, with Leo stifling a whoop and Bianca sounding rather confused. It served to remind Nico that he really did not have time to waste, and, with Reyna telling them that her way was clear, it was clear that he should, at least, be ready.

But he couldn't leave her here in good conscience.

And, of course, he cannot ask any of them, "Hey, I have a kid here, is it possible for you to advise me on what to do?"

Because obviously, he wound up as one of those without the two-way device.

To his surprise, the kid decided that answering while he was having a semi-crisis was a good time, piping up with a "Can you help me find my brother?"

That question was so unexpected it threw him off his loop for a while.

"Your brother?"

She nodded.

"You lost him here?"

She looked down at her foot. "I think he's in the place the baddies keep the people they hate at."

Nico stared at her. That was even more unexpected. "You're here to find your brother, because he had been taken."

She looked up at him then, before nodding enthusiastically. "They took daddy, too, but he said that if they disappeared, I have to find Antares before I look for him."

Nico slowly exhaled. "Okay. Your brother, Antares, I presume, is in the cells."

The girl looked confused. "He's not in a cell, he's in the place where the bad guys leave him at."

Nico felt like banging his head against the wall. The feed was quite active, with Rachel haven gotten the car and wondering where she should park it, and the others trying to figure out how to best organise their efforts.

Reyna, of course, was swearing, because there was a new swarm of guards, and it was making Nico really antsy. He did not want to be cornered in a dead end route. Even if there was no one here now, there's no guarantees that there will be no one coming down here.

But he had to find the girl's brother. Through what he could hear, there were three people down there and two had scattered, and none of them were kids. That meant that the boy was down there, somewhere.

Even as the feed informed him that the rest were quite successfully making their progress back up, to where Rachel had parked her car in the alley, Nico took the little girl's hand and headed in the direction he had originally been heading in.

Asilda was surprisingly compliant, following Nico wherever he went without much comment. Nico was rounding yet another corner when he ran into someone.

Someone shorter than him.

The girl beside him tackled the person on him with an enthusiastic "Ares!"

Nico, meanwhile, was on the floor, the breathe all knocked out of him by the puppy pile on top of him. "Can you both get off?" he finally managed.

They clambered off a little guiltily.

"Where's Nico?" came through on the feed then.

Nico startled, glancing at it, then at the kids. He could distinctly recall the girl saying that her father was taken, but he had no time to take her to find her father, yet, he cannot take the two of them with him.

"We can't leave without him!"

That was Jason.

"Come with me first," he told the children before turning and going back the same way. He had to slow down to let them catch up, but they made surprisingly good time.

This time, though, when he ran into someone, it was not a child, it was a fully armed security guard with a patrol. Taking them down was hard. He managed to knock the alarm button out, but he had two kids to mind and, once the initial shock wore off, it took the guards way too little time to respond.

There were two guards left when one of them got in a hit and sent Nico doubling up on himself. The guard who dropped him had a baton up, ready to smash it down when it was knocked out of his hand and he simply keeled over.

Jason left him to make quick work of the other guard, before shouting into his thing that he found Nico. As he was doing that, Nico sat back up and looked around.

"Hey, what're you waiting for, we need to go," Jason interrupted.

"There's two kids," Nico muttered distractedly, before increasing his volume a little. "Asilda? Come on, he's safe, he won't hurt you two."

He turned back to find that Jason was gaping at him disbelievingly. "What?" he snapped defensively.

Then he closed his mouth. There was nothing much more he could say to make this moment less than awkward. The kids showed up then, causing Jason to try to look more casual, even as he mouthed "Explanations later" at Nico before leading them out.

They left through the back door, the same way they entered. The two of them hit the streets still running, two kids in tow, and Nico followed Jason down the road towards where the sun was setting.

A minivan swerved up in front of them at a crossroad, and the doors were thrown open, revealing an irritated Reyna. Her irritation, predictably, vanished the moment she saw the two kids following Nico, replaced by shock and disbelieve. Nico ignored her, simply picking up the boy and dumping him inside the van, before ushering Asilda in. Then he clambered in, followed closely by Jason.

Rachel, not having turned around, simply floored it the moment the door closed behind Jason. Everyone who had been staring at Nico and the kids were thankfully distracted by the fact that they actually had to try their best not to be thrown off when the van did crazy swerves and turns.

They had reached the borders, to the places where one of the side doors outside was located at before Nico had much time to mull over what to do next. Leo was at the door in a moment, working on whatever he was working on while going through the book that, presumably, held the translations. The door swung open after a while, and they all stumbled out. The moment they were all outside, safely, including the two extras, Leo shut the door, doing something to make it stay shut.

Simultaneously, they looked at the kids then at Nico, before deciding silently that the best course of action would be to run for the wilderness, to get as far out as they possibly could. They had until dawn before the Council discovered just who was in this, after all, if not less time than that.

Jason was the first to stop when he deemed them to be a safe distance from Olympia. Nico could see him brace himself against a sturdy tree as he waited for the others to stream in after him.

Leo reached next, being faster than both Rachel and Nico. He doubled over, breathing hard as Rachel came to a stop behind him. While Rachel only looked a little out of breath, Leo was red-faced. Nico followed Leo's lead the moment he caught up. The adrenaline was still pumping through his systems as his heart raced.

He was a long distance person, short distance sprinting was the bane of his existence – a nightmare he had never conquered. Being forced to sprint for his life at the start ensured that he had a hell of a time trying to keep up later on.

Bianca reached moments after he did, leaning against a tree the moment she could Reyna brought up the end with Percy and the kids, who had, surprisingly, been able to keep up.

"We're safe," Jason declared breathlessly after a while, a note of pure disbelief evident in his voice. "We're safe."

"Yeah," Leo agreed.

Rachel nodded in wordless agreement, while Bianca simply remained quiet, most likely overwhelmed. Nico straightened up after he was reasonably sure he would not collapse from lack of oxygen. Turning back, he saw the colony they had left behind.

It was beautiful, a glass city in the distance, glinting as it caught the last rays of sunlight, making for a dazzling spectacle. It looked a little like a snow globe with a miniature New York inside, Nico realised. Only, this city was built with the buildings arranged in a spiral formation, the tallest building right in the centre, height decreasing as it moved further out. There was less light, too, and there was no snow.

Were the other colonies like this too? Nico wondered.

"We need to get moving," Reyna decided after a while. "It's not a good idea to be out on our own in the dark, especially not in the beyond. The least we could do is find a denser patch in this forest."

Her eyes flitted over to the kids for a moment before turning around and trudging on. No one questioned her, simply following her lead. Nico ended up being the one behind all of them this time, with Antares latching onto his arm and Asilda hanging around his other side, occasionally stopping to look behind.

Eventually, Reyna found a place that appeared to be to her liking, stopping the whole group. The moment it became clear that they were not going to move anywhere else, Asilda clambered up one of the trees close to them and settled herself on one of the thicker branches. Antares released his grip on Nico then, following Asilda's lead and curling up on the branch closest to hers. Nico looked at them a little nervously, not sure that the tree was really safe before looking back down and realising that everyone was staring at him.

"Well…" he hedged.

"Who are they?" Jason asked.

"Asilda and Ashton."

"No, I mean, who are they? Like, why are they even here with us and not back home with their parents?"

"I don't know," Nico admitted. "Their father's arrested, and they presumably don't actually have a mother, but I brought them along because there was really no better place to leave them at, alright?"

Reyna looked like she had something to say about that, before sighing and looking up at the tree once more. "They have the right idea," she said. "We should probably keep high up."

Rachel and Leo did not appear to have opinions, or objections. They simply found a tree each and settled in. Jason followed suite. Before Reyna scaled her own tree, she told Nico, "You brought them here, they are your responsibilities. Clear?"

She clambered up the tree next to her without waiting for Nico's response.

This was going to be a long, long night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was... shocking. When I rewrote it, two new characters just popped up, and at least four characters disappeared... Let me know what you think would happen next, alright? Also, you can find me on tumblr under username ivory-kelly-1969


	17. Unexpected Encounters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was only supposed to be just one day in someone else's life, to see what the world could have been like if things had only been the slightest bit different.  
> When the time was 3:59 and he couldn't get back, though, Nico started to realise just how much can go wrong when you climb through the looking glass without looking to make sure that this was a two-way passageway first.
> 
> (NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner)

'Thoughts'  
"Speech"  
Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories

* * *

**Unexpected Encounters**

They spent the first few days directionless, with only ‘away from Olympia, as far as possible’, to go on, which meant that they had simply trudged along in one direction. During a stroke of pure genius, Leo remembered that the map that he still had with him had the locations of some refugee camps. Places for people who opposed the Council and got out of the Colonies to escape them, places for people like them. Finding these places meant that they actually stood a chance.

The problem, though, was that they were completely lost. They were in the middle of nowhere, really, and there was no GPS here.

Having no idea where to go to meant that they had no choice but to press forwards. Jokingly, Percy had commented on how they might actually reach the next colony at this rate.

The glares he received for his troubles shut him up pretty quickly. No one was in a particularly friendly mood, after all, especially since there was scarcely any food left, and it had been a pretty long time since they had last came by a water source. The only good news was that they had yet to come by any of the MaiVisto either.

That was around the time they chanced upon the first dilapidated building.

It was one that had clearly lost the battle against nature, with a roof that has fallen in and almost no distinguishable structures. Even in ruins, though, it was taller than five stories. There was a giant yellow M on a red sign on the side of the building, the only thing that was still distinguishable, besides an empty spot that was probably a window. The glass was shattered, though, with shards on the ground that made Percy let out a startled yelp after he walked too far forward.

The rest took a moment to stare up at the building. Asilda was, surprisingly, the one that led the way in the direction of the building. They followed, naturally, walking out of the forest. The trees fell away, revealing a lot of buildings in varying states of collapse.

“One of the ancient cities,” she said, pausing inside a seven-storey tall dome, awe colouring her voice. “Skyscrapers everywhere, with billions of people once populating these places…”

Reyna took up the spot next to her. “Who told you that?”

“Daddy used to tell us stories about places like this,” Antares answered for her. “He said that these places were the ghosts of our past and what we dream our future to be like.”

Nico felt compelled, then, to say, “It’s not as great as it is cut out to be, to be honest. Skyscrapers means that you don’t get a lot of sunshine year-round, and that the snow is already melted when it reaches the ground, so you can’t play in the snow. And it wasn’t quite a few billions in a city, that would be too much for even a metropolis to hold, but it would feel like that to someone who was new to gigantic cities, I suppose.”

As he spoke, it occurred to him that growing up in Olympia, where the tallest building was a seven storey corporate building, would not allow for them to be able to comprehend a world where cities filled with skyscrapers were everywhere easily. And given that they grew up in what was essentially a gigantic glass dome, they have probably never encountered snow in person before either. Snow, or rain.

It made him nostalgic for home, suddenly truly glad he didn’t belong here. Although, he supposes, if he had been born here, he wouldn’t have minded. After all, you can’t miss what you never had.

But he really wanted to go home now.

“How would you know?” Asilda was blinking up at him in surprise. The rest did a better job of hiding their surprise, but, to Nico, it was still kind of obvious.

A little unimpressed, he levelled a pretty flat look at Rachel. “I did actually grow up in a city, Rachel. Sure, I was born in Venice, but we had migrated to the States with my father. I spent four years in New York before moving to a small town somewhere outside of Long Island when I was eleven. I would really like to believe that yes, I would know the place I spent practically half of my life in.”

“You’re not from this world?” Asilda asked then. Nico turned sharply to her. It wasn’t that he had really forgotten that she was here (well, he did, but it was only for a moment), it’s just that her response was…

“This world?” he echoed.

She tilted her head a little, as if studying him. “Daddy said that our mother came from this place where people lived on a gigantic ship in the middle of the universe, because Earth was radioactive and people couldn’t live there if they didn’t want to die or mutate and become three-headed goats or two-headed crocodiles, and that he had been trying to get us back to where we came from so that we could see her parents and leave this world behind.” She stopped there for a while.

“Is that where you came from?”

“I… no, my… world was a pretty safe place with phones and planes and… and well, Earth wasn’t radioactive and there is no space travel yet, it is too costly and our technology is not advanced enough…” Nico replied, even as he absorbed this new information. He wasn’t the only one stranded?

Bianca interrupted then, staring at him like he was an alien. “You’re not my brother?”

“I…” She didn’t wait for Nico to finish her answer, choosing to glance around instead.

“All of you knew… I was the last to know that you aren’t my brother?” she accused, hurt lacing her voice, the pitch increasing as her gaze stayed on Jason. Then she rounded on Percy, saying, “And you, you were fine with this?”

Percy, Jason and Nico were all saved from answering by Antares, who asked, “Is that thing supposed to glow without being connected to an electrical source?”

Everyone’s gaze were drawn to the lightbulb on Nico’s necklace, too. Nico looked down in surprise, realising that the bulb was, indeed, glowing, even if the light was rather dim. As he stared at it, though, the light started growing stronger, the lights around them starting to flicker to life, too.

“MaiVisto,” Leo suddenly said. “If electronic things started working without being turned on, or even connected to a power source, they’re around.”

Everyone froze for a moment at that.

“But they cannot appear to see anything through glass,” he added, before leading the charge towards the nearest shop that still had a workable door, a café that happened to be three shops down. They poured into it frantically, and Jason brought up the tail.

He was about to shut the door when Antares let out a shout and rushed for the door. Nico grabbed him and had him reeled back when he realised why he was running out – Asilda had fallen behind earlier on, and, knowing that she couldn’t catch up with them, had decided to chance it with the nearest shop.

Only, that shop’s door appeared to have been jammed, and the lights showed that the thing was moving in her direction.

The lights around them brightened, bathing the whole area in a luminescent halo, illuminating her when she turned around.

Jason slammed the door shut.

“No!” Antares yelled from behind the glass doors, having broken free from Nico, his eyes wide.

She simply disintegrated into nothing, gone in an instant, leaving behind the faint image of her last moments, her eyes wide, too, in fear and disbelief.

_“It’s not that no one had seen him, it’s that no one can see him. Some of the killings were done in public. Quite often, it was on a mostly desolated road, but there were people in the coffee shops or book shops who looked out and saw the pedestrian just being vaporized into ashes. And it’s not just one or two people, every single witness found said the same thing.”_

Leo’s words from his past reality, what felt like an eternity ago, before he saw the footage echoed back to him. It was so similar…

They made it into his world.

How?

It didn’t matter, though, does it? He can’t get back, not since the mirror was in Olympia and he had killed his road back there. There was no way he could build his own portal out here, discounting the fact that he lacked the basic knowledge on how such things worked in the first place. Even with the blockage removed, it would be a one-way exchange, his doppelganger.

Oh god, his doppelganger was going to come back here to find that his entire life had been destroyed. Or something.

And, did the killings make it to the news? If it did, maybe he could have told what was going on from watching the way they died. Or maybe he uncovered the footage Leo kept around, or Leo brought it up, and if that’s the case, wouldn’t it be better if he couldn’t get here, then?

He knew about the MaiVisto after all, and, given the sort of stuff he had in his notebooks, won’t he know how to defend against them? And then there’s his father’s doppelganger. Between the two of them, they could make something to destroy these aliens, eradicate them, from that world.

All this was derailed, though, when a fist came flying at him.

“Why did you hold me back?!!!”

He caught it instinctively, even as he stumbled backwards from the impact of someone barrelling into him.

“Why? How could you?”

“I can’t –”

“You let her die!” Antares screamed. He didn’t continue, simply staring up at him accusingly, anger and tears competing for space in his eyes.

In the end, the tears won out and he simply buried his face into Nico’s stomach, latching on. Within seconds, Nico could feel that the area was entirely soaked, and the boy wouldn’t let up. He tried to comfort Antares by patting him on the back.

The rest of them had simply gone back to staring at the spot where Asilda had disintegrated at, still in shock, Nico supposes. After all, it was hard for them to accept this reality that one of them would be killed by an alien, even though they had all known that the aliens were dangerous. The aliens were a little like urban legends, in a sense, bedtime stories told to scare little children, unknown factors no one had seen before. None of them had ever actually contemplated the possibility that they might ever encounter one, even when they were wandering unprotected in MaiVisto territory.

Only Bianca had not followed their lead.

When Nico looked up to meet her eyes, though, she looked away. He ignored that it hurt, just a little. Percy, meanwhile, had somehow ended up next to him. Whether it was a coincidence or not, Nico wasn’t sure, but he wasn’t about to get his hopes up again.

After all, even in a world like this, with Percy being as nice as a person could be, he still had to be paid to be nice to him. It implied things he really didn’t want to think about, not now, possibly not ever.

So he ignored Percy, focusing on trying to comfort Antares and making sure to hold him tighter, when he squeezed Nico.

Eventually, Antares stilled and went a little limp, and Nico had to hold him to keep him upright. There was just silence after that, the fragile sort that no one seemed to want to break.

Nico’s necklace started glowing, dimly, once more, and a frantic pounding on the door broke the silence. Jason, still the closest to the door, yanked it open. The strangers streamed in and shut it behind them while the lights lit up once more.

As they stood there, the lights dimmed, eventually dying out, leaving them standing in the dark once more.

After a few moments in the dark, one of the strangers spoke up. “Jason? Why are you out here?”

“How do you know my –” he responded, turning to – her, when he paused. The little bit of moonlight filtering through the door had allowed her to be visible enough. The shock was evident in his voice when he whispered, “I thought you were dead.”

“Thals?!” Percy exclaimed.

“I’d ask you where Annie was, but I don’t suppose you’d know.”

“Ann… You know Annabeth?”

Nico tried to place the name, only coming up with it when it became clear that she was friends with Annabeth. After all, there was only one person who would be recognised by both Jason and Percy and would be good friends with Annabeth.

“Now that’s a long, sad story that is better told some other time,” Thalia dismissed, waving her hand at him. She paused then, looking at Nico. “Who are you?”

“Who are you?” Reyna countered then.

She paused, looking over at them. The girl next to her spoke up for them. “I’m Kinzie, she’s Thalia, that boy there is Will. And you are?”

“Reyna. Leo, Percy, Jason, Rachel, Bianca, Nico and Antares,” she finished, pointing at each of them in turn.

“Nico and Bianca?” Thalia questioned. “Aren’t those two Hades’ kids?”

“Is that a problem?” Nico asked.

“No, it’s just… I thought you two were with the Council?”

“Well, given that apparently my brother’s been swapped out with someone from some other world and my mother’s apparently killed by the Council, since not speaking much doesn’t actually mean that I’m deaf, and, I had just gotten busted out after being kidnapped by the Council for some reason, do you really think that the two of us would be with the Council?”

They all looked at her in surprise. This was the most she had spoken since… well, the trial, really. But there was, apparently, nothing that Thalia wanted to say in response to that, and, apparently, she had lost her steam after that outburst, so they sunk into a silence before Will asked, a little tentatively, if they had anywhere safe to go to.

“We have destinations in mind, sure, but no idea how to get there. Would you happen to know about the rebel camp sites?” Reyna replied, having apparently taken over the representative for conversation for the Demigods.

That caught their interest, though. “Rebel camp sites?”

Reyna waved at Leo to take out the maps.

“Well,” he began, as he laid out the maps, angling them such that they were as visible as they could get. “We really have no clue how to get anywhere, but we figured that if we just wandered around, we’re bound to chance on one of them sometime sooner or later, you know, if they even exist at all?”

The trio studied the given maps studiously, moving it around so that they could see the whole thing. Finally, Kinzie asked Leo, “Who gave you this map?”

Leo pointed at Nico.

“Where did you get this information from?”

“My father had it coded into his booklet, I don’t know how he got all this information, and he’s not around either. How is it relevant?”

The three of them shared a look. Thalia took the initiative, starting with, “Well, I’m from Artemis’ Hunters. Sorry, Jason, I couldn’t just tell you that, because you couldn’t have come with me, but, yeah, I’m with the Hunters, Will’s with the NightWatch and Kinzie works with the Amazons, and we’ve only allied very recently. This maps here?”

She paused, making Nico tempted to threaten her to make her continue.

“It shows the location of every single campsite we have, shared within the three groups.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One character down... want to guess who's next? It's really hard to decide, but at least one more of them has to die.  
> Let me know what you thought about this story so far! Or just let me know who you think will die next. :-D  
> You can find me on tumblr with username ivory-kelly-1969


	18. Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was only supposed to be just one day in someone else's life, to see what the world could have been like if things had only been the slightest bit different.  
> When the time was 3:59 and he couldn't get back, though, Nico started to realise just how much can go wrong when you climb through the looking glass without looking to make sure that this was a two-way passageway first.
> 
> (NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner)

'Thoughts'  
"Speech"  
Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories

* * *

**Escape**

"Does this mean that you have a leak?" Percy asked, breaking the silence that formed after her revelation. "That would make it very dangerous for your people," he added.

"Nobody that comes to us have a reason to wish to return," Will answered. "He could have had some other means of finding us." There wasn't any hesitancy in his voice, although the rest of them remained contemplatively silent.

As they thought about it, though, Antares asked, "Can we go with you, then, when you go back?"

There was a slight bit of surprise in Thalia's voice as she answered, "Yes, sure, why wouldn't we bring you with us? Though Artemis' Hunters is exclusively for girls, so you'd have to go with the NightWatch or the Amazons."

"The NightWatch is strictly boys only."

"And if we want to make any progress before daylight, we should get going now," Kinzie continued, sounding vaguely annoyed.

The other two quietened at that. Then, Kinzie continued, deciding for them that the group of them were going to split up – "Smaller groups are safer."

"Three is the best number," Will added for her.

Antares ended up on the same trip with Nico, Percy and Will, simply because he refused to be separated from Nico after he was woken up from his nap. Reyna and Jason went with Thalia as she wanted to play catch up with her little brother, which left Kinzie taking Rachel and Leo. Bianca tagged along with Thalia since she had a choice.

Nico wasn't too sure how he should be feeling about this, being stuck with Percy and a child who hated him a while ago and refused to leave him now, as well as someone who was his neighbour back at home.

They split up as they left the little shop, Will taking the three of them to the left while the rest of them went the other way. As she walked away, Thalia bade them goodbye with a cheerful "Don't die!" while Kinzie simply led her charges away silently.

That left Percy, Nico and Antares with Will as they trudged along the abandoned streets, Nico's shirt still wet and Antares still sleepy. It was dark out, with only the stars in the sky accompanying them. The light bulb on his necklace lit up a few times, but they always managed to hide in the shops before the alien reached. Eventually, the pavement lined with buildings gave way to mud and rocks, leading them away from semi-civilisation into the wilderness.

"What's your campsite like?" Percy asked, a while after the sun came up. It was shady in the forest, though, and there were only a few patches of light filtering through the dense canopy here and there.

"The original NightWatch camp? It used to be a town, I think. I wasn't around when most of us still stayed in there. We took over the place as it was not too large, the buildings were not too dispersed. Built a few new houses, rebuilt a few old ones, made a wall of sorts. It's not a glass city, or a cage city, and it's not in the middle of the ocean or a large body of water either, but we're all capable of fighting and all of us know how to operate the weapons, so we're pretty alright. You'll be expected to go on patrols and all that, though," Will informed them.

"Where do you stay then, if not at the original camp?"

"The little camps. They're really just outposts, tent cities built by the more adventurous members of the alliance who wants to reclaim more land and explore a little more. Same system, patrols and the likes, although there isn't the wall as a first line of defence, so you'd have to be more alert, I suppose." After a pause, he added, thoughtfully, that "the Amazons have this outpost in the middle of a lake in the mountains, where the kids grow up at, and you can only get there by boat. So we'd be taking… Antares there, first."

After a few more hours of silence, Will spoke up once more, apparently not someone who prefers the quiet environment. "So, a little bit of information: the Hunters were found before the NightWatch. Artemis stepped out before my dad ditched. But the Amazons were around before either of us, since they were formed around the same time the colonies were. Rebel group and all that, you know? They didn't want the counters, so they persevered in continuing the historical monetary system and rejected the Council's colonies. Built their own world outside, migrating into a town like ours, and continued building and expanding. They were a colony themselves, in a sense. One erased from history, because the Council doesn't want people to get ideas, to know that there's a way to live out there, other than what we grew up knowing. It kind of sucks."

Nico sifted through the chunk and came up with a question for Will – "How do you get the time? Even if you stole them, how do you get them to everyone? How is there even enough? Or is there a way to produce more time artificially?"

"Well… Zeus is my grandfather," Will began.

"Zeus. Your father would be Apollo?" Percy interrupted. "Founder of NightWatch?"

Will blinked at him. "I'm pretty sure that's not a wide-spread information… yeah, he's my father. But Zeus originally created the time counter technology so that anyone who wanted to could find out how long they could actually live, up to the second they would die, given, of course, that there was no accidents that would end you earlier than expected."

He took a few more steps to collect his thoughts before continuing, "Than they expanded on this technology so that if someone enters a coma, or becomes brain dead, and they are legally dead, their remaining time could be given to someone else. Let's say, a child who has cancer and has a limited amount of time left, the time would, could be given to them so they could live a little longer."

"Time is money," Nico said out loud. "That's what they had started on, right? Then someone took the technology away from them and twisted it. The intention was good at first, but like everything else that starts out with good intentions, the moment someone slightly corrupted comes into contact with it, it ends up like this."

Will looked a little surprised. "You're really smart. Yeah, that's basically what happened. What they didn't say, however, is that all three of the original pioneers did not really like this. Your father's one of them, actually, so I suppose you would know."

"And yours too," he added, looking at Percy. "You're Jackson, Poseidon's son, right? I'm sorry, it took me a while to realise that."

Percy smiled at him. "It's alright, he's not the most well-known. And he did make an effort to keep us out of the spotlight. It would be nice to know how your way of time works, though."

"Well, Zeus didn't like what they did, so he figured out a way to cheat the system by freezing the timer. Unfortunately, by the time the method actually works, the system was so firmly rooted that he would crash the system if this leaked. It didn't really matter, since they killed him after they found out anyway. What the council didn't know, however, was that my father and Artemis both had Zeus' research. It took a few tries, but we succeeded eventually. So technically, everyone who joins the NightWatch or the Hunters become immortal."

"Immortal?!" Percy squawked.

"In the most technical sense, we could, technically, live forever. We're not invincible, though, so anything could kill us, including starvation or a simple dagger to the heart. We just won't age."

"What about the Amazons?"

"They never had counters to start with. Kind of like an extinct race, I suppose," Will commented absently.

Nico was suddenly extra aware of the glaring lack of a time counter on his arm.

This conversation broke the dam, apparently, allowing conversation to flow smoothly as they moved on to other topics. They continued chatting softly, talking about the historical issues and the flaws in the current system, as well as ways to possibly change it. The conversation took most of their focus, leaving them so absorbed in it that they did not quite notice the surroundings.

It was a rustle and the sound of a tree falling that startled them out of their bubble. Nico, being in the lead, was right in front of the tree that was blockading them. He only noticed, then, that the light bulb was glowing.

Percy reacted faster than him, tackling him to the floor and covering him. The light grew impossibly bright as the two of them landed in a heap behind the tree trunk. It was a surprise the bulb did not fuse. It was made to withstand this, Nico supposed.

He screwed his eyes shut as he laid there below Percy, immobile and trying his best to breathe softer, unconsciously tightening his grip on the other boy above him. From the corner of his eye, he could see Will crouching down, hidden behind a mess of brambles, Antares there beside him.

Somehow, the alien did not notice them. It wandered off, leaving a trial of fallen trees in its wake. Long after the light went out, Nico stayed there. His heart was, somehow, still racing, the adrenaline refusing to flush from his system although they were alone now. Percy didn't help much, remaining as prone as Nico did, his body in full contact with Nico's, a heavy weight that Nico wasn't sure he could, or would want to, dislodge.

Will had left his hiding spot some time after he deemed the alien to be a safe distance away, crouching down besides Nico and Percy, speaking to them. Nico couldn't quite hear him, though, the rush of his blood deafening him, drowning out everything else. Eventually, Percy unfroze enough to push himself off, and Nico tried not to feel the emptiness and the lack of contact.

With Percy off, he had no reason to stay where he was. He leveraged himself up slowly, arms like jelly. When his heart finally decided to slow down, he breathed out a little in relief. "We're alive."

He hated how much it resembled Jason's voice when they first got away from Olympia. It made him wonder just how much more bad luck they would run into.

"Yes, we're alive. They can't kill us that easily, we're really hard to kill," Percy joked weakly, trying to lighten up the mood. It worked, to a certain extent, derailing Nico's train of thoughts. He wasn't sure if it was pathetic that Percy's hand on his was the thing that was grounding him, reassuring him.

When he was sure his legs would not give way if he tried to stand, he accepted Will's proffered hand to pull himself up with, leaning against the tree whenever it felt like he would be reacquainted with the ground. In the end, it was Antares holding onto his hand that cleared his head and gave him some strength in his limbs again.

He wasn't sure if Percy had actually realised that his hand has found its way to the small of his back, settling there and anchoring him. He couldn't bring himself to shrug him off, though.

As he calmed down, he found that he could not bring himself to maintain eye contact with either of them as he apologised and suggested, rather stiffly, that they move on to make up for the lost time. He knew that they exchanged a look, but neither of them disagreed with him.

The silence returned.

Will kept quiet this time around.

They paid more attention to the light bulb this time, after the scare from before. There were a few times it lit up dimly, signalling to them that an alien was in the vicinity, but none of them ever came close enough to truly be a problem.

It gave them quite a fright every single time, though. They were lucky enough to have held out the first time around, Nico realised. With the amount of MaiVisto they were running into, it's amazing that the one at the derelict shopping centre was the first one they had encountered.

Then, of course, because their luck would not hold, they ran into one that just so happen to be scavenging. This one moved fast enough that they did not have much of a warning before the light was bright enough to indicate that they were within the visible range of the alien if there had not been trees in the way.

Antares scaled a tree pretty easily, since he was small and light enough, whereas the remaining three of them scattered to hide behind trees or bushes. Nico ended up in a semi-trench between a bush and two trees, given that he was not confident in his ability to climb quickly enough.

He had sat there, holding his breath, curling in on himself instinctively, trying to make himself smaller and less noticeable, not that it would make that much of a difference. Thankfully, the invisible alien did not seem that interested in the trees that the others took to.

Even if it did appear to find the bush Nico was hiding behind interesting. It had ripped the trees out and was trying to remove the bush. Nico, flattening himself against the ground as much as he could, face down, suddenly found a moment to wonder why it was that while the humans simply were disintegrated, the trees were ripped out instead. And as the alien struggled, he thanked the bush for its extremely complex root system that goes very deep into the ground, buying him some more time. He was contemplating just running for it when the bush shuddered and dropped back down, the thorns digging into his back now.

Nico raised his head in surprise, noticing a ball of yellow-gold flame-like lights that was dazzling. It was right above him, and from his position, he could see a few cracks in the ball of light. Through that, he saw a blur of black, whizzing by. The entire ball was blasted backwards by the next shot, and his attention was attracted to the direction the shot came in this time.

There was nothing distinguishable there, except for the blinding flash of light as yet another shot was fired. The alien let out a ear-piercing shriek turned into a wail as it fled, leaving behind a trail of golden-black wisps that caught onto the trees.

As Nico watched from his spot on the floor, a shadow detached itself from the shadows, stepping into the lights.

The figure was familiar in ways it probably shouldn't have been.

"Father?"

He truly was equal parts shocked and disbelieving.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, that was an unexpectedly long hiatus... I'm sorry about it, but there's nothing to be done when I couldn't access my computer and therefore couldn't get my hands on the original document...   
> Oh, and what do you think about Hades' appearance? Was it expected? Or just too abrupt? Leave a comment to tell me what you thought! Or just let me know who you think will die next. It should be easier, since the pool of characters has been narrowed down to only five. :P  
> You can find me on tumblr with username ivory-kelly-1969


	19. A Familiar Face

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was only supposed to be just one day in someone else's life, to see what the world could have been like if things had only been the slightest bit different.  
> When the time was 3:59 and he couldn't get back, though, Nico started to realise just how much can go wrong when you climb through the looking glass without looking to make sure that this was a two-way passageway first.
> 
> (NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner)

'Thoughts'  
"Speech"  
Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories

* * *

**A Familiar Face**

"Hello to you too," Hades greeted dryly as Nico stared blankly up at him.

He was in jeans and a torn t-shirt, completed with a jacket, this time. Nico knew that they were definitely stolen – none of the clothing really fit. The badge still pinned on the jacket decided for Nico that this certainly was his father – it read: "Hecate, M.D., Resident of Delphi."

What truly stole his attention was the gun-like thing slung over his left shoulder. It was assembled from bits and pieces of unfortunate electronic (electrical) devices, and it wasn't hard for Nico to realise that this was what had scared the alien off.

"Well," he continued, offering a hand. "The floor truly doesn't look too comfortable."

Still a little stiffly, Nico accepted the offer, getting yanked into a tight hug after being pulled off the ground. He obliged, melting a little and putting his arms around his father. Sure, it was kind of clingy, Nico supposes, but, well, he'd just find time to be embarrassed about it later.

Seven months and a little more was truly a long time without a parent.

"I thought you were gone for sure," Nico muttered by way of an explanation for why he wasn't letting go just yet.

He yanked Nico into a tight hug after pulling him off the ground. Nico obliged, putting his arms around his father and letting himself hold on. Sure, it was kind of clingy, Nico supposes, and he has no idea why, since it was first Leo and now his father, but he would just find time to be embarrassed about it later, he supposed.

Seven months was really a long time without a parent.

"I thought you were gone for sure," Nico muttered by way of an explanation.

"Glad to see you, too." Then, he pushed Nico away and a serious expression replaced the light-hearted one. "Why were you even here in the first place?"

"Mirrors," Nico replied wryly. "I went through one without making sure it was a two-way passage for me. You?"

"Mirrors too, it was blocked – "

"Hades di Angelo?"

Nico turned, realising that they had an audience. Will, Antares and Percy were all there, having realised that the threat was gone. There was a little awe, in little Antares' eyes, as well as Will's.

"Percy, is it? And you, you're one of Apollo's son?" After receiving a delayed nod, Hades' eyes dropped to Antares last. "And you are?"

"Antares," he replied softly.

Nico, meanwhile, was starting revise his memory. He had definitely never mentioned Percy in his father's presence before, so he should not know about Percy, let alone be able to recognise him on sight.

What had he missed?

"How do you know my father?" Will asked in the background.

"Apollo was a pretty good friend," Hades began, bringing Nico back online with the threat of him continuing with 'back in my world'.

"He doesn't know yet," he hissed.

"They don't know your father, they know a version of your father, cause they aren't from this world," Antares told Will, taking this right out of Nico's hands.

Will looked at him in surprise before swivelling his head to study Nico once more, thoroughly this time, with surprise and wariness. And a dose of 'are you sure about that?' that he would not voice out, because this declaration came from a child. Nico met his gaze impassively while he wondered how Antares knew that Hades wasn't this world's, before deciding that he'd worry about that later.

Antares rightly interpreted Will's extensive silence for what it was, though, and apparently have decided that Will had to be convinced. "They're from a parallel world, a place like this place, and they switched."

Coming to the realisation that he might as well just prove to Will that Antares wasn't lying, Nico rolled up his sleeves.

Will stared incredulously.

Before looking up suspiciously.

"I thought that Hades had been trying to figure out a way to eradicate the timer from a person who already has it?"

"Well, he does have the blueprints for it here, but…" Nico trailed off then, suddenly realising that this might not actually work. Will's look was starting to make him really uncomfortable.

Why is it that lying is easier than telling the truth?

"Oh, for the love of gods above and below, wouldn't you just listen? They're not from this world, Nico's never been given a timer and perhaps Hades had indeed figured out a way to destroy the timer completely, too, but he's not capable of executing it here since he's safely locked away in another world! Nico's been dragged here to replace ours, he's stuck here, officially, too, since the portal's all the way back in Olympia, just cut him some slack, alright? He didn't ask for this! And neither did his father!"

That… that's something Nico hadn't seen coming.

Given how silent Percy had been, all of them had mostly forgotten about him being around, actually. And, well, there's the fact that as far as Nico knew, Percy's a pretty even-tempered guy who rarely gets mad, so it was unusual for him to suddenly lose his temper.

Nico's not going to look too much into how "And neither did his father!" sounded like an afterthought, placed in there in an attempt to reign in the speech and sound polite.

Evidently, this little speech was enough to convince Will, or at least halt the topic. Whether it was the sincerity of Antares' words or the heat in Percy's, something must have satisfied him enough that he let go of this topic and stopped questioning Nico.

In the silence that followed, Hades asked them if they were heading anywhere in particular, resulting in the consensus that they should just get going.

Surprisingly, they managed to reach their destination at the end of the day without any delay, coming by a campsite that somehow made Nico feel more at home than Olympia managed to.

Instead of a giant house with no one around and streets either filled with stuffy people or bereft of all signs of life, this place had cafés and homey houses lining the paths, with a school that looked much more welcoming than any schools he had seen before.

From the way Percy was looking around, Nico knew that he was not the only one a little awed. There was wonder in Antares' voice when he paused at the first sighting of the place's interior to ask, "You have time to create somewhere like this?"

"This is an Amazon outpost," Will informed them. His voice softened as he added, "They have families living here." There was a little wistfulness in there that Nico caught.

"You want a family, don't you?"

Will looked at him, faintly startled, as if he had not been expecting a response. Nonetheless, he replied, "Yes." His lips quirked up a little. "Always wanted to have a couple of those little critters running around."

Hades informed Nico, then, that since he wasn't needed for this conversation, he was going to take Antares over to the group of kids playing tag in the playground three blocks away because he had been watching them longingly. He wasn't really done when Antares simply ran off, forcing him to break off and follow the boy down the road.

"Why don't you go for it, then?" Percy asked, while Nico observed how Will watched Antares go. He was suddenly noticing things he hadn't seen before, when he hadn't been looking. 'He'd be a good father,' Nico judged, based on what he could see.

Will's reply derailed him. "It's in the rules. If you join the NightWatch, you forfeit the right to date someone of the opposite gender."

Nico stared at him, as did Percy.

"Well, you could, technically, date a girl after you join, but it's not advisable and you can't, you know, cement the relationship," he clarified. When it became clear that it still muddled the two non-NightWatch members, Will tried again. "It's something to do with the counter bio-technicalities, you aren't allowed to have children together, there's a few who had tried before and it turned out that two people with frozen time counters will have a child that can never grow up normally."

"Not normal in what way?"

"There's that one who grew to three and just stopped aging, and there's those who wouldn't go past the embryo stage. Then there's the kids who grow to fifteen in three years and die when we tried to implement a time counter to halt their aging and save them." After a while, Will added, "Besides, none of us can age, ever, and since, through trial and error, it's a 100% so far that not a single one of the children can take a time counter. It is a kind of a given that the parents will always outlive their kids, so long as they don't get killed."

"Losing your parents is losing your past, losing your child is losing your future," Nico recalled softly. He then considered it for a while. "Does unfreezing the timer help?"

"It's a one-way road."

The conversation died there. It was a long, long while before Will picked it back up with a new topic, asking them if they fancied knowing where they'd be sleeping tonight.

"There's a place ready for us?" Percy asked, surprised. Nico was, too – they definitely weren't planned arrivals.

"There's a set of place set aside for unfortunate souls who happen to chance upon us. See that place there?" Will pointed at the clump red-walled houses near the end. "I'm not too sure that they're all vacant, since some of the people living around here would relocate into those places when they need to patch their own places up again. That place is not too bad, actually. It's mostly just nice spacious connecting rooms, shared restrooms, even if there's only one kitchen per house."

"We could just stay there?" Nico clarified.

"Sure!" Will said easily. "We could set ourselves up first."

When he had both Percy's and Nico's approval, he started leading the way. After one glance cast in Antares' direction, he led them towards the duo at the playground. The five of them made their way to the temporary residences together.

As Nico soon found out, though, each house had only five rooms. They were all pretty low-rise, to counter the chance that they'd be toppled. Apparently, though, there was an influx recently, arising from the fact that they weren't the only unexpected arrivals and the fact that the Queen of Amazon was visiting. This just meant that only one house was left vacant.

Which, honestly, would not have been a problem, if not for the fact that there were only two beds per room – a fact Will had conveniently forgotten to mention. It left them ten beds for the five of them and the (hopefully) seven more on their way.

When it was settled that Hades and Antares would share, given that they were the only adult-kid pair around, Nico despaired silently inside. As one of the smaller-sized member of the group, the shortage of beds meant that he would have to share with someone if he didn't want to sleep on the floor. Which he didn't. The beds looked truly comfortable.

'They're quite large,' Nico consoled himself. 'I could probably keep to my side of the bed. And hopefully whoever I'm sharing with would stay on their side.'

"Well," Will began, turning to look at Nico. "If you don't mind…" he trailed off there, much to Nico's surprise. At least, until he realised that his father was staring at Will from behind him.

Suddenly, he wanted to laugh. His father was going to be getting him out of this sleeping arrangements? By glaring at anyone who suggests that he share? Oh gods, would he glare at anyone who's going to offer to share with Bianca, too?

Jason?

Then it faded. Considering the situation seriously, he couldn't actually get out of sharing. He can't deny that he was the smallest in size, among the boys. If he refused to, one of the others would have to share, and it'd be worse for them than for him, wouldn't it? Since there's no way he'd make the girls share.

But if he absolutely had to share, he's not going to stay in the same room as his father.

No way.

Thus.

"Will," he started. Will, who hadn't turned around yet, gave him his full attention. "You can stay here." He inched closer to the door.

"I'd just…" he stepped out of the room, all eyes on him now. "I'd just go over to –"

"Nico! You're here, who else, everyone with you made it, right?" Leo's voice sounded distinctly anxious, a little lost and quite breathless. Nico looked in that direction, a little relieved that Leo made it safely. Kinzie climbed up behind him, relatively expressionless.

Nico waited, his eyes trailing to the ladder Kinzie came up from.

Only, there wasn't a third person.

"Where's Rachel?" inquired Percy from Nico's side, startling him a little.

Kinzie, unexpectedly, was the one to reply.

"Your friend didn't make it."

She delivered the news succinctly, smoothly, softly. It didn't do anything to disguise the self-reproach or the undertone belying that she thought that she could have done something to save Rachel.

It didn't quite register to Nico, either, standing there mutely, feeling a little gutted from the confirmation of the answer he had known, subconsciously, that he would receive. It's always a little different, to know something and to hear it spoken out loud. And, besides…

Rachel's dead?

The girl full of spite and fire, gone? One of his dearest friends, departed? No longer here?

Gone?

"Breathe," Percy whispered. His hand was on Nico's shoulder, a cool spot, an anchor. "Just breathe, in, out. Breathe."

He continued in the soft tone as he steered the two of them into the room next to the occupied one, shutting the door behind them.

No one came in.

It didn't occur to Nico until a while after he had scrapped himself together that this was the first time he was alone with Percy in a room since that disastrous conversation back in Olympus.

Percy hadn't reached there yet, Nico could tell. And, that reminded him that Percy didn't really care. Then why was he here? He doesn't have a reason to, anymore. There was no one here threatening him or bribing him into pretending.

It gave him a little hope, that Percy would be willing to help calm him down, up until he realised that it was just how Percy was. He was nice to everyone, and Nico must have looked so pathetic back then…

He wanted to just curl up and wither away.

At least then he didn't have to look up and face Percy. Or go out there and face everyone else.

But he had to. Sooner or later, he'd have to do this anyway. Might as well get it over and done with.

He looked up to meet Percy's eyes.

What he saw wasn't what he expected.

Well, close to what he should have expected, but not what he had hoped for.

It really hurts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm finally going to pick up the romance again! Which means that we're arriving on shaky grounds, since I'm spectacularly bad at this. I'm going to try, though. Another piece of news: We're nearing the end, three chapters to go. Thanks to everyone who managed to read this far! And I guess you all know who died now. Honestly, I've had a whole scene written out for that in the original story, but I edited the whole story to be in Nico's POV so she wasn't there. And I couldn't bear to kill anyone off anymore. I've grown soft :(
> 
> Talk to me on tumblr! My username is ivory-kelly-1969.


	20. I'm Sorry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was only supposed to be just one day in someone else's life, to see what the world could have been like if things had only been the slightest bit different.  
> When the time was 3:59 and he couldn't get back, though, Nico started to realise just how much can go wrong when you climb through the looking glass without looking to make sure that this was a two-way passageway first.
> 
> (NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner)

'Thoughts'  
"Speech"  
Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories

* * *

**I'm Sorry**

It was conflict.

A caught-with-a-hand-in-the-cookie-jar guilty look when he realised that Nico had looked up. Except, it wasn’t a cookie jar, was it? It was a snare, a trap, a trap without even a bait that was worth getting caught for. It was obvious, so obvious, even to Nico, that Percy simply regretted this.

Really?

It suddenly welled up in him – a certain anger that started simmering. This wasn’t fair. Objectively, he had always known that life wasn’t fair, but this? Wasn’t it bad enough that he’s pretty much lost his whole life from before, that he had to find out that apparently, he wasn’t dateable material if he wasn’t to be cheated on or paid for, that even with only a few almost-friends here and there, he had to lose one of them, too? Why did he had to have to have it hit home, now, that even to someone who helps people pretty much unconditionally, he had to be that one exceptional case of a person he would regret helping.

Of course, it could also just be that Percy regretted yanking the person he pretended to date for his mother’s sake into this room because he’s only just realised that they were alone together and he didn’t want to face Nico.

The anger dissipated at that, leaving Nico just feeling tired.

So damned tired of all this, this emotional rollercoaster he had been taking – this whole stupid farce of a life he had to live. He wanted to fall into that bed and close his eyes and bury his head under the pillow and cocoon himself in the blankets and pretend that when he wakes up, he’d wake up from this nightmare of a place in his own home like Caroline did.

Or simply unearth the cleaning supplies and go wild with it.

Except that he couldn’t do that now, could he? No one here knows about how he copes, they weren’t his friends, not really, not to the extent his friends back home had been his _friends_ , and he can’t let his father think that he’s relapsing.

He doesn’t want to disappoint him again.

And he couldn’t go to bed, he still had to go out there to face his father, face the rest of them, whoever still remains.

He doesn’t have to deal with _this_ now, though. He’ll. He’ll do what he does the best, then, walk (run) away.

He pulled away, making for the door.

 “Wait,” Percy called.

Nico waited. He didn’t turn around, though. He didn’t want get his hopes up. He didn’t want them dashed.

The silence stretched.

His hopes plummeted. Holding back didn’t help, apparently. Just as he really was about to leave, Percy spoke up again.

“I’m sorry.”

That… was so unexpected Nico actually turned back around.

“Sorry?”

“I… I’m sorry,” Percy repeated.

“Why are you apologising to me?” Nico cut him off before he could reply. “I’m not the one you should be apologizing to.”

He can’t accept the apology, not for someone who wasn’t here. He wouldn’t accept the apology meant for someone else.

“You know who you should be apologizing to,” he added. He wouldn’t add what he really wanted to say. He won’t. He turned his back to Percy, hand on the knob, truly intending to leave.

“Wait, I. I know, but…” he trailed off.

Nico turned the knob and pushed the door open.

“You’re amazing, you know?” Percy blurted out.

“What are you trying to say?” Nico asked warily, pulling the door close. He wouldn’t get his hopes up, he couldn’t – he wouldn’t.

“I wasn’t supposed to fall in love,” Percy blurted out eventually.

Nico stared at him. “With him,” he added for Percy. It made sense, now that he thought about it. Of course. A little bitterly, “Why would that be relevant to me? You should be telling him this.”

“Not him,” Percy said decisively.

“You.”

Nico turned back to stare at him. Percy looked sincere, he didn’t look like he was lying, but. He doesn’t mean this, had never meant this, he… looked like he did and Nico can’t, he can’t do this now. He can’t deal with this now, he has to. He.

He felt like hyperventilating.

“I can’t. I’m sorry, I can’t do this now, I have to. I.”

He fled the room, the house.

Nobody stopped him. He wasn’t sure if anybody even saw him.

He was at the playground when he ran into someone.

“Sorry!” he gasped out instinctively, stumbling back and looking up. Almost immediately, his brain locked. This lady… she looked like a sterner, older version of Reyna.

He couldn’t help it. He stared.

“What are you staring at?” someone spat in disgust. He tore his eyes away, realising for the first time that the lady he ran into wasn’t alone.

He couldn’t quite find words, though, losing his speech as he opened his mouth, for that was around the time he saw, over their shoulders, that Bianca, Reyna, Jason and Thalia were all approaching from behind.

His eyes flitted back to the lady.

Hylla?

But Hylla died. Hylla died, her blood on Reyna’s hands because she can’t watch her sister bleed out while the poison still lingered in her blood. Hylla died, having gotten stabbed protecting her sister that time Nico was with Reyna when they wandered into the wrong ‘territory’, not realising that someone else had claimed this place in the time Reyna had stepped out. Hylla died, Thalia and Nico and Reyna the only witnesses, the others being the corpses of those who were idiotic enough to attempt another stab at Reyna. The idiots who didn’t run when they realised that this was not going to be easy.

Hylla died – she died three years ago, her life ended in an alley by her sister after a fight that left more dead than alive, so why would she be here?

Then again…

They turned around then, noticing that he was distracted.  Nico could see the exact moment Reyna spotted them. The lady, perhaps, to be more precise. Reyna had frozen on the spot, her eyes widening before her expression slowly turned furious.

She marched forward determinedly, drawing to a stop in front of the lady and tilting her head up. For a moment, she only took deep breathes. Then she drew her hand back and slapped her.

For a moment, everyone froze. Then –

“You bastard!” and “How dare you!” rang out simultaneously.

Reyna barrelled on, though, disregarding the lady next to who Nico presumes to be Hylla. “How could you – I thought that you were better than dad, how could you just up and leave and let me assume you were dead, how could you, ten years! For ten years. Ten bloody years. You –”

She choked herself off. From where Nico was, he could see the tears pooling, not quite falling.

She took a few steps back, then, half-turning around before just pausing there, probably having realised that there was nowhere for her to run to. It did not appear to matter to her, though, since she decided in the next moment to just pick a random direction and go. The woman next to Hylla moved forward, presumably to grab her.

Hylla stopped her, pulling her back.

Nico was left forgotten, then, all eyes on Reyna as she left. He stepped back into the shadows, trailing her path with his gaze, too, remembering the look in her eyes.

The betrayal, the hurt. The shattered trust and gods, he couldn’t just let her run off into dangerous territory now, not when he was responsible for her sister’s death back home. Partially responsible, perhaps, but she wouldn’t have been there – Hylla would not have followed them there – if he had not decided to tell Reyna that he was going to that part of that town to look for the set of painting materials his sister wanted.

She hadn’t costed him much, but he lost her a sister, and he knew what it felt like.

The decision wasn’t hard to make.

Without making much of a sound, he ran after her, chasing her in the shadows.

* * *

A few hours into the forest, she slowed down. The tears had dried, the tracks running down her face the only remains. She scrubbed at it fiercely before resting her forehead against a tree.

Nico waited, wondering what he should do now. He had forgotten, briefly, that he wasn’t her friend here, that he didn’t have a place or a right to be here right now.

But he couldn’t leave either.

In the end, it was his inattention that had costed him the choice. When the twigs crackled, Reyna whipped around. “Who’s there?” she demanded, her voice coming out a little high.

Nico never realised that she carried daggers around in this world, too.

He stepped out of the shade, all too aware of how exposed and defenceless he was here, in front of her.

It took her a long moment to decide that he wasn’t a threat. It took her even longer to lower her weapons. Both her defences and her metaphorical hackles stayed up, though. The wariness she tried to conceal showed – it’s too easy for Nico to read her. He spent a long time learning to do so, after all. To him, she was like a book.

In another language.

The fact remains, though, that she did not trust him here. Here, she had never allowed him to catch her off guard, to see her at a weak moment. He wasn’t an ally here, even if he was neither a stranger nor an enemy, he was not her friend.

She looked ready to bolt again.

Nico didn’t want to think about the implications.

“Why are you here?”

It was a simple question. An obvious question.

Something she would never ask, usually. Still.

“It’s a bad idea to wander out here alone, I was told. What if you got lost?”

She gave him a blank look.

“Or run into an alien?”

He could tell that she would not be responding. To get her to snap out of this, though, he had to elicit a response from her.

If it was violent, so be it.

(He hoped it wouldn’t be, though. He didn’t want to fight her.)

(Not again.)

“Hylla would die for you. You know that.”

That pulled Reyna’s attention back to Earth. It also earned him a truly dirty and wilting glare brimming with anger.

“You’d presume that,” she snorted.

After a moment, “You don’t know anything.”

“Really.”

“She would leave me without so much a goodbye. Die for me?”

“At least you got to see her again…”

“Do you know what it feels like to mourn for ten years and find out that the person you mourned for was never dead? That that person was living and had a perfectly fine life without you? Without letting you know?” Reyna suddenly bit out. “She was everything to me. She was the mother I never had. When she disappeared…”

She met his eyes.

“She could. She would do this. She proved it. How could you say that she cares? How could you even assume that?”

Nico could hear the silent “How dare you?”

He held her gaze. “I don’t have to assume.”

He could see the surprise.

“You don’t,” she tested.

Nico held his head up higher, stiffening up naturally. “I know.”

She stared at him for a long while, the emotions whittling themselves away, leaving only a blank space. An empty space. She tore her gaze away, fixing it onto the tree next to Nico. He remained silent, waiting for her to speak up.

It wasn’t his turn.

“How?”

It came out soft, scratchy. Disbelieving. _Un_ believing.

She didn’t wait for his response.

“Why?”

This question was stronger. Louder. More desperate.

He could see her wanting to turn, to leave. To go, to get out, to leave, pretend this wasn’t real. That she didn’t know, deep down, that this was true. That yes, her sister loved her enough to die for her.

“She loved you.”

This wasn’t enough, Nico knew. She would want more.

He didn’t continue. It was all he had to say. The rest couldn’t be put into words, not words that he knew.

She looked up, glancing at him, once. Before turning away, leaning onto the tree and letting gravity do its work.

Curls up on herself, hiding from the world. He stands, a stranger this time. Impartial. Silent, unjudging. Not present, not to her. A guard, a sentinel. To protect her, for this little while, to give her a chance to break down. To have her meltdown and cry. To let her pick herself up again, later.

She understands, he know. She has to.

She would.

He would know.

He had a sister, too.

Once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is posted to coincide with the golden jubilee, so happy SG50, Singapore! I hope to see an SG100, when I'm old and cranky and surrounded with cats.
> 
> Back to this story, I hope this chapter doesn't disappoint. The original draft had completely discarded the romance and bringing it back feels like trying to drag a kitten into a bath. An adorable, disagreeable kitten. I had to leave it hanging after discarding the original thread. It's exhausting and heartbreaking, trying to find a part to cut and discard. Honestly, I admire those authors who can write romance and make it look effortless.
> 
> Come talk to me! I'm on tumblr as ivory-kelly-1969.
> 
> Oh, and I've started a blog. It's eotena.wordpress.com, that's where I'd post original works (short stories I've written and regular 100 word updates) as well as random recommendations and quotes and the likes. I hope you'd give it a chance!


	21. It's (Not) Goodbye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was only supposed to be just one day in someone else's life, to see what the world could have been like if things had only been the slightest bit different.  
> When the time was 3:59 and he couldn't get back, though, Nico started to realise just how much can go wrong when you climb through the looking glass without looking to make sure that this was a two-way passageway first.
> 
> (NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner)

'Thoughts'  
"Speech"  
Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories

* * *

**It's Not Goodbye  
(Don't let it be)**

The whole while was spent in solitude and silence, each thinking about their own sister, perhaps. Well, Nico spent the whole time trying not to think too much about Bianca now that he’s brought her up, and he’s assuming that Reyna, meanwhile, would be going through her memories of her times spent with Hylla in an attempt to comb out what she might have missed.

Trying not to think about Bianca turned out harder than expected now, though, so, in a misguided attempt, he started sorting through his memories with Percy instead. This Percy, the one that he would have to share a bed with later. The one who said that… He searched for an indication that, perhaps, Percy was truly telling the truth and was not just saying this to.

To what?

“Are you coming, or not?” broke him out of the loop. He looked up, in surprise, at Reyna, who had migrated to a bush a few trees away, partially disappearing into the forest, sometime during his inattention.

Not quite inclined to keep her waiting, he saved the ‘analyse her actions’ part for later, storing it away, before hurrying to catch up with her. The sun was setting, casting the whole forest in a darker light, the little streams of rays filtering through slowly disappearing as they made their way back in silence.

Close to the edge, however, they ran into Hades.

Nico was suddenly, forcefully reminded that this was his father, the one who gave a damn about him. The one who actually cared if he was alive and might have been worried when he ran off. A little guilt started to worm its way into his conscience.

“Where had you been?” Hades asked upon spotting the two of them.

For a moment, there was silence. Then, Reyna spoke up on Nico’s behalf, “He followed me to make sure I would not get lost or get killed, sir.”

Nico stifled the urge to give her a grateful look. He didn’t want to lie to his father, not now, not so soon.

Hades, thankfully, took her word for it.

“It’s dark.” Without another word, he turned, leading the way.

The two of them followed, automatically, although Reyna lingered when they reached the door – she had no place in there, yet.

For a brief few seconds as Hades opened the door, he made eye contact with Nico.

He can’t read his father at all.

“Is there any empty rooms in there?” Reyna asked hesitantly, eventually.

“I’m not sure. If you don’t mind, we could just share a room until tomorrow.” Belatedly, it occurred to Nico that he was sharing a room with Percy. He was quick to amend, though, “I’ll take the floor, you can take the second bed.”

Reyna looked away from him.

Silence accompanied them to the room.

Upon opening it, Nico discovered that the second bed was not empty.

Apparently, they must have decided that he was a lost cause, as was Reyna. Grimacing, he was prepared to leave Percy and Leo be and go to share with his father – before he remembered that his father was sharing with Antares.

Reyna caught onto his indecision, apparently. “It’s okay,” she whispered, moving ahead of him into the room and digging out the pillow from Leo’s grip.

“Let’s just share the floor. It’s just one night.”

Nico stared for a while as she settled herself down, before deciding that this was a better idea than going to the other rooms to search for space, he would be sleeping on the floor regardless. At least the two in this room slept like sleeping beauty.

Dragging the pillow out from under Percy’s head felt like retribution. The victorious feeling did not quite diminish when Percy did not even wake up. In fact, only amusement came when Percy snorted once, shuffling a little to resettle into a new position.

As he woke for the fifth time, though, unsettled by something he couldn’t quite recall, he gave up on sleeping and returned Percy the pillow. Reyna, apparently, had not had the same problem, seen from how she was deep in sleep regardless of when he woke up.

Closing the door behind him quietly, he climbed onto the roof, looking to be alone.

Only, he wasn’t.

Bianca looked at him, startled, from her place on the roof.

For a moment, they stared at each other, at a standstill. He then smiled at her a little awkwardly, moving to climb back down.

“Wait.”

He looked at her, surprised.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted out. He levelled a gaze at her. Deciding that he probably should stay here and finish the conversation, he scooted closer to her and settled there, waiting for her to finish.

She looked away uncomfortably. “I shouldn’t have reacted that way, I suppose. I’m sorry.”

Nico kept quiet for a while, considering.

“I should have told you,” he said at last. “I meant to. Towards the end. I just never quite got around to it.”

She didn’t respond.

Eventually, she spoke up again. “Is he safe?”

“Your brother?”

“Yeah.”

“He should be. My life was quite…” Normal. Safe. Different. “Normal, back home.”

She looked down after that. They sat in silence for a while before she asked another question, this time about his world. What it was like. It prompted a conversation that led to them comparing their lives, lasting until the sun broke the horizon.

There was silence, for a while, as they watched the sunrise.

“We have to meet the council.”

Nico looked at her, uncomprehendingly.

“They’ll assign us places to go.” After a pause, she added, “You could probably join the Amazons.”

Nico grimaced a little. “Do we have to join one of the groups?”

“Well. It’s safer, isn’t it? And easier. Besides, there are advantages. You can pause your timer with them.”

“You can’t restart it,” Nico reminded her.

She pursed her lips for a while before shrugging. Nico took the hint and let the topic rest. They sat through the sunrise quietly, watching the colours shift and brighten together.

They made it to the council meeting place (Hades’ room, apparently) in time. From the looks of it, Hylla had sorted out her issues (at least some of them) with Reyna, given that while Reyna still refused to look at her, she doesn’t actually glare at Hylla anymore.

The session concluded with the decision to reallocate all of them to the campsite with the most available slots and let them make themselves useful there.

Nico was quite sure that it escaped no one’s notice that Bianca was not given a place with them. No one pointed it out, though.

When almost everyone had vacated the room, it was Bianca, Nico and Hades left.

“I’m joining the Hunters,” she told them. There was defiance, challenging them to tell her to do otherwise.

Hades accepted her decision with a nod.

Nico, Nico had seen it coming ever since she kept her peace.

It didn’t make anything hurt less, though.

And that was that.

* * *

 

Life in the canyon was, mildly put, busy.

He only discovered, much later than he should have, that they were given a place in the safest valley amongst the children because what they had with them was, as Hylla put it, “ground-breaking”. The unofficial reasons: Reyna was with them and they were a package deal; Nico and Hades were around and they were a scientific curiousity; Antares was young enough that he had a direct pass there; they were all not quite good enough to survive for long with either the Hunters or the NightWatch.

The point was, when they got there, they got to work, and the workload truly multiplied at a rate faster than bacteria carrying out cell division – it only ever increased, no matter how hard they tried to decrease it. They became invaluable, sure, but it left them with no time to themselves.

Nico and Leo had their work cut out decoding and sort-of replicating the stuff the notebook had provided, while training a bunch of newbies shipped over to try help them out. At the same time, Percy and Jason got to work testing out these babies and not die in the process. Reyna was just squirreled away to help Hylla with the administrative work – apparently even rebels needed paperwork.

The responsibility and the understaffed ‘research and development branch’ allocated to Nico and Leo meant that there was barely any free time for both Nico and Leo.

Which meant that there wasn’t time for Nico to spend with Percy.

Which doesn’t translate to him avoiding Percy, no matter what Leo said, because he doesn’t have time for anyone else, either. It helped that Percy never sought him out.

It was just coincidence that whenever he came down to collect whatever new thing they came up with, Nico would be at the back end ‘lab’ (unofficially his workspace) of the warehouse they were given, working on something else.

He had to crack the timer, after all, and it was bloody complicated. It needed time. It made no difference that the members whose timer would self-activate still had a few years to go. Leo agreed with him on this.

What Leo doesn’t know was that he was also attempting to reconstruct his own portal, because, no matter what, this was not home. This was not his Leo, not his Jason, not his Reyna, and Rachel… All those people that were truly his friends, nobody here could compare, no one here mattered the way they did.

Sure, he’s not making any progress at all on that front, given that he’s working entirely off theories, but. It’s just, he has no idea how long it would take before he could eventually have enough time to sneak into Olympia and try to access the portal once more. At least this way, he could reassure himself that he was doing everything within his ability to get back to his home.

He just wanted to go home.

When Percy eventually took the hint and stopped staying when he dropped by, though, he wasn’t elated. Neither was he surprised. He couldn’t help the disappointment, though.

Life went on, however.

And then Bianca died.

It was so out of the blue, like a lightning strike – which was exactly what it was. Funny how life was, truly, that in the end, it wasn’t even a bloody alien that got to her, it was a lightning bolt.

An honest-to-god lightning bolt that could have struck anywhere and just so happened to hit her.

When he got the news, he solemnly retreated to his test lab.

And proceeded to beat the hell out of all the (metal) test-dummies that were made to be shot at.

Nobody questioned the dried tear tracks and the bloodied knuckles when he eventually came out the next morning and sat quietly in the corner until Hades came and sat with him.

Percy wasn’t around, ever.

He wasn’t upset.

He was dealing.

Alright, so he broke out the mops and buckets every time he got into his room. So he rearranged and colour indexed every item of his wardrobe. So he made sure that everything is precisely a certain distance apart. So he kind of maybe growled at anyone who tried to touch his things or enter his room (or his workspace).

And maybe he started making everyone working in the ‘R&D department’ (the warehouse, really) wipe down everything before and after they use it and place it exactly where it was before.

And perhaps he had been destroying at least three dummies a day testing out even more weapons on his own, but this destruction kept him calm. It kept him from giving in to the urge to spread his zone to the entire house, the entire warehouse instead of confining it to his space.

Okay, so he wasn’t dealing so well.

He was dealing, though, whatever anyone says.

Percy, he bitterly reflected sometimes when he was alone, couldn’t stand this.

It was true – he never, not once, came near Nico. He wouldn’t even come in to pick up his equipment, leaving Jason to pick up the equipment for both of them.

When Will discovered a few buried maps with campsites and posts that they were not aware was around, Jason was sent to help him reclaim them, given that he was the best at handling all the new equipment Nico and Leo were coming up with, right up there with Percy.

With Jason now working with Will on expeditions, Reyna started coming down instead.

The day Reyna came down with the news that there was something else left behind in either Delphi or Olympia and that Hades would thus be going there, given that he was the most familiar with both places, he didn’t flip.

He just took a deep breath and turned up at Hades’ room-slash-workspace in the warehouse with his cleaning tools. Hades didn’t comment, letting him do what he needed to.

He felt all of five years old and scared of the lightning storm as he curled up on the bed with his father and let him hold him. He no longer fit that well, but it made him feel safe in a way he hadn’t really felt since… a long while ago.

There was no objections to him pretty much moving into this room, even though the bed wasn’t really that big.

Because it wasn’t enough to just send Hades (of course it wasn’t enough), they need someone to go with him. With Bianca gone, Jason tied up with Will, Reyna tied up in admin and Leo tied up in R&D with him, it was only Percy, since his job could be done by anyone with guts, anyone who dares to go out there with minimum backup, including the people he and Leo were ‘training’.

He didn’t go and see them off.

Actually, that’s not true.

He did not intend to see them off.

But he did.

There wasn’t much to say, in the end – Percy was gone after one indecipherable look. As Hades followed him, disappearing into the bushes, Nico couldn’t help it.

“Get back soon!”

He never intended for his voice to waver slightly.

Hades paused, turning around, smiling at him for a moment. He waved, too, before disappearing into the shadows of the forest, leaving Nico there.

He didn’t move for a long while, not until the sun was down and Reyna had come around on her little boat to drag him back into the safe island, because it wasn’t smart to stay on land and unarmed and he should have been back long ago.

‘I’ll do your job for you, I’ll wait,’ he vowed silently, sitting on the bed in Hades’ empty room. ‘Just get back here soon.’

‘Don’t let me lose you, too.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone for sticking with me for this long!!!   
> The next chapter is the last chapter, and it's going to be a semi-epilogue/prologue, since it's kind of jump-starting the sequel?   
> So, let me know what you thought about this work, please? I read everyone's comments, really, sometimes I don't reply because I don't know how to, but I appreciate everyone's comments! You have no idea how excited I get whenever I get a comment notification, truly (unless you're a fellow author).  
> And, talk to me on tumblr! It's ivory-kelly-1969 there.


	22. Joker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was only supposed to be just one day in someone else's life, to see what the world could have been like if things had only been the slightest bit different.  
> When the time was 3:59 and he couldn't get back, though, Nico started to realise just how much can go wrong when you climb through the looking glass without looking to make sure that this was a two-way passageway first.
> 
> (NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner)

'Thoughts'  
"Speech"  
Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories

* * *

**Joker**

In the ensuing months, he coped.

Leo was surprisingly helpful, he discovered, as was Reyna. Both of them seem to understand his need for a distraction, and both were equally helpful in providing him with things to do. Even if they never came close to being the friends he used to have, they kept him occupied enough that he barely had time to think, which was good.

It gave him less time to worry himself out of sanity and made him all the more productive. It helps that they had discovered blueprints to spaceships (spaceships!!!) in the stack, and, given that he was the only one who even had the slightest idea how these things worked and what they do, he was placed in charge of reconstructing that.

Out of the scrap metal pieces they salvage from junkyards in the colonies and the ones they recycle here.

He was half buried under the spaceship – quite literally – trying to get one of the engine parts to fit into the jigsaw puzzle that was a work of art made out of recycled car parts when he noticed a pair of sneakers. And a pair of boots.

Ignoring them for a while, he went back to his work, only to realise that neither appeared to be walking off.

This made him pause for a moment. Nowadays, only Leo and Reyna bothered to approach him, if only to pass him more work to do. Jason would seek him out, too, but that was only whenever he gets back here, and that had only happened twice so far.

Besides, they all usually leave him be when they notice that he was busy and came after him at mealtimes, or closer to night time.

That aside, neither of these shoes appear familiar. Especially the boots…

It looked suspiciously like the combat boots he owned back home, which shouldn’t be possible. He had checked, they did not sell footwear like that here.

It was enough to convince him to leave the safety of the spaceship to see just who was waiting there.

Unfortunately for him, he accidentally tugged on a piece that, apparently, was not well connected. The hiss as it landed on his left cheek, discharging a load of oil that had dripped out of the leaky oil tank that he’d have to replace, again. He couldn’t help the wince or the cringe.

When he identified the visitors, his first thought was that he probably got a concussion from the handle, never mind that it landed only on his cheek. His second thought was, since they were both definitely still there and staring down at him as he kind of sat there stupidly, that he probably should have been warned about this meeting first so he could have prepared for it and cleaned himself up a little.

Then it sunk in that he was dripping with oil and sporting a bruise and sitting in front of Percy and – himself?

Rather unfortunately, the black sinkhole did not appear underneath him.

It was around then that he realised that he was staring at Percy and himself.

The face that had stared back at him in that mirror, holy hell, that long ago?

Wearing his clothes, he knew those were his, he just knew, and Percy too was wearing that jacket his jacket oh gods he’d never thought never wanted to but –

Realising that something else was off.

“Where’s my father?”

It slipped out quietly.

The guilty look on Percy’s face was enough of an answer.

Nico looked away. This wasn’t unexpected, but he didn’t want to deal with this, not now. He noticed their audience, then.

Reyna and Leo at the door.

Jason at the door.

His doppelganger in front of him.

“How did you get here?”

He knew the answer, but there was a block, and there was a reason, so –

“Through the mirror.” It was eerie, hearing his voice coming from someone standing right there, in front of him. Someone who was him, just, different. At least, the first time around, he was only an image on the mirror, something that can be dismissed as an illusion, a flat, moving picture, perhaps. Not something corporeal and there and real.

“Sorry about blocking it up, by the way,” he added, an afterthought after a silent moment.

Of course he blocked it up.

“Why would you do it?”

It was unnerving, Nico discovered, to have your replica stare at you in the eyes. It was enough that Nico forgot about the audience, for a moment.

It created an illusion of privacy.

“We needed time to perfect the weapons. It was never expected for either of you to disappear out of town, though, and that messed up our plans a little.” A pause. To consider his next words, perhaps. “In the end, there was a give and take opportunity and I showed them what happens to people who mess with my mother.” He smirked, then. The look was just so wrong, on his face. It’s too…not lopsided.

Mother. Bianca.

The smirk faded in a moment as something appeared to occur to him.

“The portal’s gone.”

“Gone,” he repeated flatly.

His father, too?

He wasn’t watching, but he noticed that Percy was leaving. Inconspicuously. Nico had to give him points for trying. It wasn’t important right now, though.

“How?”

“They were searching the house,” he began. “Should they find the portal, they’ll find your world. It’s far too defenceless, too unprotected, they’ll exploit it. Besides, our work was still there. And the portal was unstable, it allowed anyone MaiVisto to access it without going through the towns, I can’t risk it.” Defensiveness crept into his words towards the end.

Nico didn’t care right now.

“How do I get back?”

He had to know. He had to know if there was absolutely no chance to get back home, because if there was no confirmation, he would not be able to let go of that little silver of hope. No matter the fact that, even to himself, he sounded a little desperate.

“I can try to recreate the portal,” his doppelganger started a little hesitantly. The uncertainty was clear to both of them. Hastily, he added, “It’s really not that hard, we just have to find the place with the perfect overlap, then build up the mirrors and…”

“And?”

There was a reluctant silence.

“Hope that father gets it, I guess.”

Neither of them continued the conversation for a while.

“Until then, I’m stranded here, aren’t I?”

No answer was answer enough.

He had half accepted it during his stay here, but now it was final. Nico was already resigned to the fact, and the confirmation was just that. A confirmation. An affirmation that his life was now a joke.

A bloody giant, cosmic joke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was quite short, but I hope you enjoyed it all the same.  
> Unresolved Percico :P and uncertain future...  
> And, that's it!   
> The first long work I've finished. Now I can focus on NaNoWriMo and Deviation rewrite and sequel for this story.  
> Thanks to everyone for sticking with me for this long!!! Kudos to all of you.  
> Let me know your opinions on this work, please? Everything is read, I promise, and I appreciate everyone's comments. Don't be a ghost, please? 
> 
> And, talk to me on tumblr! It's ivory-kelly-1969 there.

**Author's Note:**

> *** NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner ***
> 
>  
> 
> Since this is a fusion AU of a sort, with minor plot elements from all over the place, I'll credit 3:59 to be the main source of inspirations. It's a relatively new book but the story is amazing. There's elements from the movies: I'm:Mortal, The Darkest Hour & 10 Things I Hate About You, but they're all subplots. Or supporting details.


End file.
